
Qass 

Book^ 



SLAVERY 



DISCUSSED IN 



OCCASIOIAL ESSAYS, 



FROM 1833 TO 1846 



LEONARD BACON, 

PASTOR OF THE FIHST CHUIiOH IN NEW HAVEN, 



ON>-^VofCo. 



"^o^Washlr.^^^" 



NEW YORK: 
BAKER AND SCRIBNER, 

145 Nassau Street and 36 Park Row. 



18 4*6 

/ 



Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1846, by 

LEONARD BACON, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the DisUict of 
Connecticut. 



EDWARD O . J E .N K KN S , P R I .N T L ] 

Hi Nassau street. 



PREFACE. 



Several years before the commencement of the 
Anti-Slavery agitation on this side of the Atlantic, 
it so happened that I was led to consider, with some' 
care, the condition and prospects of the enslavecj^ 
class in the United States. From that time to 
the present, no subject not immediately connected 
with my official duties or my professional studies, 
has occupied so much of my attention. When 
the British Anti-Slavery Societies began their la- 
bors, in 1823, I entered into their views as then 
exhibited ; and I learned much from the reports of 
those Societies, and from the pamphlets published by 
Stephens, Clarkson, Wilberforce and others. When 
the Rev. Joshua Leavitt, now so emineiit among 
American abolitionists, made his first appearance 
as a writer on slavery, in 1825, I agreed generally 
with his views, and was instructed by his arguments ; 
for his views, at that time, were substantially the 
same with those which the British abolitionists were 
then urging upon Parliament. From him I learned 



iv PREFACE. 

to make certain distinctions wliicli still seem to me 
essential to any just view of the subject, widely as 
he and others have since departed from them.* 

* After the lapse of one and twenty years, it cannot seem indelicate 
to refer to Mr. Leavitt as the author of the articles above alluded to. 
They were published in the Christian Spectator for 182.5, pp. 130-138, 
^39-246. I well remember the violent sensation which they produced 
in "Charleston, where the Christian Spectator was immediately put upon 
the Indcx,^ librorum proldhitorum of his holiness Judge Lynch. Yet 
those articles were far from containing the modern Anti-Slavery doc- 
trine. Witness such passages as th-ese : 

" The right of personal liberty is not, in all circumstances, an abso- 
lute right. If it were so, slavery would have never been recognized 
in the Word of God. Yet it was permitted and regulated in the laws 
given by God himself Lev. xxv. 44, 45." *' Neither has Christianity 
interfered in this respect to abolish slavery. Paul has given directions 
for the mutual deportment of masters and servants, or slaves, as they 
were in those days." — p. 131. 

*' Our own laws recognize involuntary servitude whenever the public 
good and the interest of the individual require it. Such is substantially 
the case of minors, of idiots, of spendthrifts, of drunkards. The right 
of personal liberty, therefore, is not one which may be lawfully vindi- 
cated «i o/^iarartZs. Salus 2^o2n'.Ii, suprcma lex. l^ie public good, the 
interest of all classes, both whites and blacks, is the supreme laiv. 
Slaves have no more an abstract absolute right to rise and kill their 
masters, and involve the whole community in destruction, than the son 
or apprentice has to revolt from the control under which the laws have 
placed him. The very idea is most preposterous, that a part of the 
community have a right, which they may assert to the destruction of 
the peace and happiness of the whole. The right of the master, there- 
fore, to the services of his slave, maj/ be as perfect as to the services 
of his apprentice. But this right depends, in either case, wholly on 
the assumed fact, that in existing circumstances the pubUc good re- 
quires the existence of servitude. It is a mere creature of society, 
and depends entirely upon the laws."— pp. 131-132. 



PREFACE. y 

In the year 1830, or soon after, a new doctrinej or 
what seemed such, began to be current. The Eng- 
lish Anti-Slavery Societies, in the heat of their con- 

*'I have had three objects in view, in thus going into the nature of 
slavery as a legal institution. In the first place, I wish it to appear 
that the relation between the master and slaves, is a proper subject of 
legislation. It is a conventional right and depends entirely upon the 
laws"— ibid. 

" The second object was to relieve slavehDlders from a charge, or 
an apprehension of criminality, where in fact there is no oflfehce. 
There can be no palliation for the conduct of those who first brought 
the curse of slavery upon poor i:\frica, and America too. But the body 
of the present generation are not liable to this charge. Posterity are 
not answerable for the sins of their fathers, unless they approve their 
deeds. They found the negroes among them, in a degraded state, in- 
capable either of appreciating or enjoying liberty. They have, there- 
fore, nothing to answer for on this score, because they have no other 
alternative, «f^;rcscnf, but to keep them in subjection. There is no- 
thing so destructiveto the moral sense, as to be forced, by our principles, 
to the acknowledgment of guilt, in that which we at the same time be- 
lieve to be absolutely unavoidable, and in which, therefore, it is impos- 
sible really to feel self-reproach." "A Christian J7^a^/ hold slaves, and 
exact their services, without any occasion to feel a pang of self- 
reproach merely on account of his holding slaves." — p. 133. 

" The third object aimed at, was to fasten the charge of criminality 
on the very spot where such a charge will lie, and where it ought to be 
felt; and where alone reformation is practicable. There are no duties 
without corresponding rights, and no rights without corresponding du- 
ties. While it is the duty of the slave to submit himself to his own 
master so long as the laws of this country make him a slave, it is his 
right to be protected by the laws, in the enjoyment of life, health, chas- 
tity, good name, and every blessing which he can enjoy consistently 
with the pubhc welfare." 

"Christianity enforces this dictate of sound reason. ' Thou shalt 
love thy neighbor as thyself,' is as much the law between master and 
1* 



YJ PREFACE. 

tlict with the ^^ West India interest," being most rea- 
sonably disgusted with the resistance of the colonial 
authorities to every measure that had any tendency 
towards freedom, had begun to renounce all further 
dependence upon such measures, and to demand of 
Parliament the immediate abolition of slavery. '^ Im- 
mediate abolition " had become the popular doctrine 
among philanthropists; and '^ gradualism " or the 
notion of a process of abolition, was scouted as an 
obsolete idea. Accordingly the doctrine of immedi- 
ate abolition began to be current here ; but here it 
was necessarily, to some extent at least, another thing 
from what it was m Great Britain. There it was a 
demand that a new constitution of society, a new 
body of lav/s, a new system of relations between 
capital and labor, and between the landholder and 
the peasant, should be imposed upon dependent and 
vassal colonies by the omnipotence of the Imperial 
Parliament. Here it became the doctrine of "• imme- 

slave, as between any other members of the human family. This is so 
obvious as to appear ahnost Ukc a truism. And yet this is the very 
thing that has always been lost sight of among slaveholders. It has 
been wholly disregarded in our own nation.'-' ** We do not answer 
to this indictment unless we either plead guilty, or show that our laws, 
our customs, our modes of thinking and acting, recognize the human- 
ity of the negroes."— pp. 133, 134. 

Some of these statements are no doubt unguarded. Cut the leading 
principles and distinctions carried conviction to my mind at the time ; 
and it still seems to me that there can be no just reasoning on the sub- 
ject without them. 



niEFACE. ^,- 

diatc emancipation '^ by individual masters, '' at all 
hazards," and without regard to consequences; the 
doctrine that slavery is a sin on the part of the mas- 
ter, always and in all circumstances, and that he 
must immediately renounce his authority without 
asking what is expedient for the commonwealth, or 
what for the welfare of the slave. All who re- 
fused to receive that doctrine and its corollaries, 
were denounced as '' pro-s]avery," and as sacrificing 
duty to expediency. 

Such was the occasion on which I felt myself called 
to publish the first of the following essays. A criti- 
cal examination of the subject in the light of the Scrip- 
tures, seemed to be necessary at that time ; and I did 
what I could. The two or three years that followed, 
were years of great excitement in respect to slavery. 
The most extravagant views were presented on both 
sides. On the one hand, the Anti-Slavery party, 
including the no-government element from which it 
has now in some measure disengaged itself, seemed 
to aim at irritating public opinion into phrenzy. 
On the other hand, the southern people were demand- 
ing that the discussion of slavery in the free States 
should be put down by mobs ; and there were found 
nortliern men base enough to lend themselves to 
such a demand. The dates of several of these es- 
says, will show that they were written during that 
period of excitement. 



VUl 



PREFACE. 



Ten years ago, I thought that I had done all that 
it was my duty to do in this way. But within a few 
months past, a sort of necessity seems to he laid 
upon me. The suhject came up, last summer, 
in the General Association of the Congregational 
Pastors of Connecticut. And there, as I have al- 
ways been wont to do wherever an opportunity 
has arisen, I expressed very freely the same vieAVS 
which I had formerly uttered through the press. 
What I said, in the freedom of fraternal debate, was 
reported, not very accurately, in several newspapers; 
and some of those reports were commented upon 
with severity in the '' Christian Observer," a Pres- 
byterian newspaper, which, though published in 
Philadelphia, seems to be designed chiefly for a 
southern circulation. Thus summoned before the 
public, I could not well refuse to answer for myself. 
Then came the proceedings in tlie American Board 
of Foreign Missions ; and the extent to which I 
found myself involved in that debate, and in the 
newspaper discussions which followed, seemed tore- 
quire that I should not excuse myself from one more 
attempt to vindicnte what is manifest to my mind as 
truth. 

Nothing is more likely, than that some differences 
may be discovered between the earlier essays and 
the later, for the Author has intended to regard truth 
rather than his own consistency, and he will not 



PREFACE. [^ 

undertake to maintain that, in thirteen years he has 
learned nothing-. The only changes made, besides 
the removal of some verbal inaccuracies, incident to 
the haste of writing for a periodical publication, are 
the correction of one pas^sage which when first pub- 
lished, gave unintentional offence, and the omission 
of two or three allusions, in the earlier essays, to the 
controversy which the Anti-Slavery Society was then 
maintaining v/ith the friends of African colonization. 
That conU'oversy, since our Anti-Slavery friends 
have done so much at colonization in Canada, seems 
to be at rest ; and I have no wish to revive it. 

Some of my friends have expected that I w^ould 
reply to the address issued against the American 
Board of Missions, by a convention lately held at 
Syracuse. That address, I doubt not, is capable of 
most abundant refutation, but I do not conceive that 
it devolves on me to reply to it. In the details of 
such a reply, and the numberless questions of fact 
which it would be necessary to consider, the original 
question of principle, the question of the relations of 
Christianity to slavery, the question whether a mas- 
ter of slaves may in any instance be recognized as a 
Christian, w^ould be quite forgotten. 

It is no part of the object, in any of these essays, to 
prove that the slavery which exists in these American 
States is wrong. To me it seems that the man who 
needs argument on that point, cannot be argued with. 



X PREFACE. 

What elementary idea of right and wrong can that 
man have ? If that form of government, that system 
of social order is not wrong — if those laws of the 
southern states, by virtue of which slavery exists 
there, and is what it is, are not wrong — nothing is 
wrong. Such a book as Wheeler's " Law of Sla- 
very," leaves no room for any argument to prove 
that our southern slavery is wrong, if only the reader 
is gifted with a moral sense. It is, therefore, taken 
for granted in these essays, from first to last, that 
every man has rights, and that our American slavery 
— which denies all rights to some two millions of 
human beings, and decrees that they shall always 
be held at the lowest point of degradation — is too 
palpably wrong to be argued about. The wrong of 
that slavery, however, is one thing, and the way to 
rectify that wrong, is another thing. The wrongful- 
ness of that entire body of laws, opinions and prac- 
tices is one thing ; and the criminality of the indivi- 
dual master, who tries to do right, is another thing. 
These essays, therefore, treat chiefly of the way in 
which the wrong can be set right. 

New Haven, April 24th, 1846. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 
Slavery, [Quarterly Christian Spectator, 1S35.] . . 13 

The Abolition of Slavery, [Quarterly Christian Spectator, 
1S34.] 57 

Present State of the Slavery Question, [Quarterly 
Christian Spectator, 1S36.] SO 

Slavery in Maryland, [Quarterly Christian Spectator, 
1&36.] 107 

Letter to the Editor of the Philadelphia Christian 
Observer, 1S45, [New York Observer, 1S45.] . . 123 

The Collision between the Anti-Slavery Society and 
the American Board, [New York Evangelist, 1846.] . 13i 

No. I. — The Question Stated, 131 

No. II. — The Action of the Board, .... 144 

No. III. — What has Church Government to do 
with Slavery ? What is Slavery in the United 
States.? 1G3 

No. IV. — What has Church Government to do with 
Slavery ? 173 

No. V. — Shall we follow the Apostles in their Ad- 
:aiiNisTRATioN of Church Government or shall 

WE TRY TO DO BETTER ? ISS 

No. VI. — Christianity and the Church counter- 
acting Slavery. How ? 204 

No. VII. — Duty of the Churches in the Free 
States, ......... 217 

No, VIII.— Explanations, 236 



OCCASIONAL ESSAYS 



SLAVERY.* 

[quarterly christian spectator, 1S33.] 

The author of this book is an intelligent and able 
minister of the gospel, in the Presbyterian Church. 
A few years ago, he was pastor of a congregation in 
Prince Edward County, Virginia. Born and edu- 
cated in that State, and having spent more than 
forty years there, in the midst of a slaveholding 
population, he entertained those views of slavery, 
which, we believe, are common to pious and reflect- 
ing men in all parts of the country; he believed in 
" the moral evil of slavery, and the duty of Chris- 
tians to let no selfish interest prolong the sin and 
injustice, but, in the fear of God, to do all they can, 
in consistency with duty, to fit for and restore to 
freedom those in bondage." This view led him to 
favor the Colonization Society, to take up contribu- 
tions for that object, and to attempt founding an 



* Letters on Slavery : Addressed to the Cumberland Congregation^ 
Virginia. By J. D, Paxton, their former Pastor. Lexington, Ky., 
1833. 12mo. pp. 207. 

2 



14 SLAVERY. 

auxiliary society among- his people. Occasionally 
he made some little reference to the subject in his 
public preaching ; but, as there were usually slaves 
in the congregation, and as he knew how readily 
some persons might take offence, his allusions to the 
'' delicate subject," as the Southrons call it, were 
few and slight. By marriage he had become the 
master of one or two families of slaves. He felt it 
to be his duty — and his wife's views were entirely 
coincident with his — to make those persons free, as 
soon as it could be done wnth a fair prospect of im- 
proving their condition. Accordingly, he says, ' ' we 
watched the progress of the Colony at Liberia for 
several years; and, in the mean time, used means 
to prepare our slaves for freedom. As soon as we 
were satisfied that they had better prospects there of 
doing well for themselves, than they could have 
with us, we encouraged them to go ; gave them such 
an outfit as our means afforded, and sent them to the 
Colony.'^ These slaves, eleven in number, sailed 
from Norfolk, on board the Indian Chief, in Febru- 
ary, 1826 ; and were among the first of the slaves 
manumitted for the purpose of sending them to Af- 
rica. 

Not long after the going forth of these freed-men, 
and while the excitement, naturally produced in the 
neighborhood by such an event, had not yet entirely 
subsided, our author commenced a series of essays 
on slavery, in the Family Visitor, a religious paper, 
which had some circulation among the families of 
his charge. The tliird number of this series con- 
tained an energetic exposition of the inconsistency 
between slavery, as constituted by the statutes of 



SLAVERY. J5 

Virginia, and the requisitions of the law of love. It 
gave great offence to those members of the congre- 
gation, who had been previously dissatisfied with 
their pastor's liberating his own slaves ; and as Mr. 
Paxton was well understood to be the author, great 
efforts were made to create a general disaffection to- 
wards him. Immediately on receiving official in- 
formation that an opposition had been organized 
against him, he resigned his charge, " leaving the 
Cumberland congregation to obtain a pastor whose 
opinions might agree with their own.'' 

Such was the occasion of the letters before us. 
They were written soon after the author's resigna- 
tion of his pastoral charge, but have remained un- 
published these six years, because the author, unwil- 
ling to do anything rashly, yielded to the advice of 
certain friends, who thought ^' that on account of 
existing excitement, some little time should be al- 
lowed to pass before they were given to the public." 
We confess that our judgment differs from that of 
Mr. Paxton's cautious friends. To us it seems that 
this little book could have done no great harm, and 
might have done great good in the six years during 
which it has been shut up in the author's deslc. To 
us it seems, too, that the excitement of the occasion 
would have caused the book to be read with interest 
by many who now may never read it at all. 

The first of these letters contains a narrative of 
facts, relating to the occasion on which the book 
was written. The second treats of ministerial pru- 
dence, and exposes the folly of supposing, that when- 
ever offence is taken at a minister's preaching or 
conduct, he is of course to be regarded as having 



16 



SLAVERY. 



acted imprudently. The third refutes the notion, so 
common at the South, that all discussion on such a 
subject is to be avoided as dangerous, and shows that 
the danger of slavery itself is such as cannot be aug- 
mented by temperate and candid discussion. The 
fourth exhibits the origin and nature of negro slavery 
in the United States, and compares it with the sla- 
very which formerly existed in England. The fifth 
shows how slavery violates the principles on which 
all our boasted political institutions are founded ; 
and inquires what sentence is pronounced upon 
it by the law of nature. The five following are an 
investigation of the teachings of Scripture in respect 
to the morality of slavery. The eleventh and twelfth 
exhibit some of the evil tendencies of slavery ; and 
argue very strongly that no Christian, of enlightened 
views, can lend the sanction of his example to a 
system fraught with such tendencies. The thirteenth 
refutes some of the arguments most commonly of- 
fered in vindication of slavery. The fourteenth and 
fifteenth are devoted to the inquiry, '' What must 
we do with our slaves ?'' Our author's own exam- 
ple has shown the favorable opinion with which he 
regards the efforts of the Colonization Society ; yet, 
he is far from thinking, as some seem to think, that 
nothing ought to be done except as the emancipated 
are carried to Liberia. He proposes several plans 
for the removal of the colored population, and obvi- 
ously regards tlie separation of the two races as im- 
portant to the well-being of both ; yet he doubts 
whether the removal of all is practicable, and brings 
arguments to show that the emancipated slaves 
might become, in time, even in the midst of the 



SLAVERY. I'j 

country which they now occupy, industrious and 
happy free laborers. He shows, with much clear- 
ness, what can be done by individual slaveholders 
to promote the general abolition of the system ; and, 
in the sixteenth letter, concludes with an eloquent 
array of " motives to immediate effort," drawn from 
the doctrine of God's retributive dispensations, and 
from the certainty that dreadful judgments must fall 
upon a country so laden as ours with the guilt of 
slavery, unless they are averted by a speedy repent- 
ance. 

This book is a fair specimen of that sort of dis- 
cussion on the subject of slavery, which we wish to 
see more of. The author does not bluster, like some 
eminent philanthropists in our part of the country ; 
he does not attempt to mystify and madden the minds 
of inflammable readers, with the stereotype talk about 
'^ immediate abolition ;" he writes like a man who 
knows whereof he affirms, and who knows precisely 
what prejudices and errors he has undertaken to 
combat ; he aims directly at the instruction and con- 
viction of those slaveholders who imagine that there 
is no w^rong in slavery, and that nothing is to be done 
but to hand down the system, just as it is, to other 
generations ; — and such is the coolness and clearness, 
and at the same time the pungency, of his statements 
and arguments, that slaveholders, meeting with the 
book, cannot refuse to read, and reading, cannot 
easily avoid being convinced. We hope the book 
may have a wide circulation in that part of the 
country for which it was especially designed. We 
hope it may be replied to ; and that the author may 
thus have occasion to come out again, with his 



23 SLAVERY. 

Strong appeals to undeniable facts and self-evident 
principles. 

In saying all this, however, we do not make our- 
selves responsible for everything which the author 
has said. Here and there, if it were worth our 
while, we might find fault with a position or an 
argument; but those slips and errors — if they are 
such — do not affect the great conclusions to which 
he wishes to conduct his readers. For example : we 
have our doubts whether the exegesis by which he 
would get rid of some passages of Scripture often ad- 
duced in defence of slavery, is in every instance cor- 
rect. Yet the general position, that the Bible does 
not justify or authorize slavery, he defends success- 
fully ; for he brings forward the great principles of 
Christian morality, and applies them to the question 
in such a manner as leaves no doubt on the mind of 
the unbiased reader, that, whatever difficulties there 
may be with the exegesis of particular passages, the 
Bible is irreconcilably at war with such a constitution 
of society. 

Taking leave, now, of Mr. Paxton and his book, 
but not of the subject, we propose to occupy a few 
pages with a scriptural inquiry respecting the moral- 
ity of slavery. 

To many who will read these pages, the question 
is one of direct practical importance. We have 
readers, not a few, who are the hereditary masters 
of bondmen, or who live in tlie midst of a slavehold- 
ing community. And besides these, many of our 
readers in our own part of the country, will probably 
be living, by and by, where the laws establish slavery, 
and where every man, whose circumstances permit 



SLAVERY. 19 

him to employ a servant, is called upon to decide for 
himself, whether he will be a slaveholder or not. 
Thousands of the natives of the north — young men, 
and men more advanced — men in every business 
and profession — are continually becoming citizens 
of the south, and there find that the question of the 
morality of slavery is to them a question personally 
and immediately practical. 

The subject is important to us all, in another as- 
pect. We at the north, are fellow-citizens with 
slaveholders ; and between us and them, as fellow- 
citizens, there is, and must be, a constant intercourse. 
We and they not only meet by our representatives 
in the national legislature, but meet personally, both 
in our part of the country and in theirs. Many slave- 
masters are associated with us, in our various benevo- 
lent and Christian enterprises. Often individuals from 
among them, brought hither by business, or in pursuit 
of health, come and worship with us in our temples, 
or as members of sister churches, sit down with us 
at the table of the Lord. Not less often, one and 
another from among us, finds himself carried by his 
business, or is driven by disease, into those parts of 
the country where slavery prevails ; and there slave- 
holders not only offer him the civilities of ordinary 
hospitality, but, if he is a professor of religion, invite 
him to worship with them in their families and in 
their temples, and to commune with them in all re- 
ligious ordinances. Thus, it is an important ques- 
tion to all, how ought we to regard these fellow- 
citizens 1 And this is only another form of the ques- 
tion respecting the morality of slavery. On the one 
hand, we are urged to believe that they are without 



20 SLAVERY. 

any responsibility, in relation to tlie existence and 
continuance of slavery among them. On the other 
liandj we are visited by traveling lecturers on slaver}^, 
and inundated with pamphlets and papers, urging 
us to believe that every slave-master is, as such, a 
criminal of tlic deepest die, a ''felon in heart and 
deed," whose crime is only inferior ''to intentional 
and malignant murder," a " thief," a " robber," a 
" tyrant," who deserves to be regarded as the common 
enemy of the human race. These circumstances 
certainly give great importance to the inquiry respect- 
ing the morality of slavery. 

First of all, in this inquiry, it is necessary to 
define distinctly the subject in debate. What is 
slavery ? 

Before attempting a direct answer to this question, 
it is to be remarked, that there are many varieties 
of slavery ; that the laws of different countries and 
ages limit and modify the relation of master and 
slave, in many different degrees ; and that, there- 
fore, the answer ought to include slavery in all its 
forms. There may be slavery, where the master 
has, by the law, an absolute irresponsible power over 
the persons and lives of his slaves ; and there may 
be slavery, where the master has no powder to put 
his slave to death, and if he inflicts an}^ punishment 
beyond a certain measure of severit}^, he must be 
called to account at a public tribunal. There may 
be slavery, where the slave is by the law incapal)le 
of acquiring property, incapable of marriage, inca- 
pable of testifying in a coinl of justice, incapable of 
complaining to a magistrate against the cruelty of 
his master or of any other person ; and there may 



SLAVERY. 21 

be slavery, where the slave is invested with all 
these rights, and protected in them. There may be 
slavery, where the slave is allowed to be sold like a 
horse, at the pleasure or necessity of his master, and 
to be torn away by force from all the objects of his 
natural affection ; and there may be slavery, where 
the slave cannot be transferred from one proprietor 
to another, except with his own consent. There may 
be hereditary slavery, entailed upon unborn genera- 
tions ; and there may be slaves, whose children are 
free-born. There may be a slavery for life ; and 
there may be a slaver}^ limited to a term of years. 
We say, therefore, the definition of slavery ought to 
include all the varieties of servitude which the word 
slavery properly denotes, and ought to exclude 
everything else. 

Shall it be said, then, as is often said by those who 
talk most on this subject, that, for a man to have 
property in his fellow-men, is slavery? How are 
w^e to understand this definition ? Has not the mas- 
ter a property in his apprentice — the father in his 
children — not to say the husband in his wife, and 
the wife in her husband ? Is all the property which 
one human being may have in another, slavery 7 
Who is he that would abolish slavery, by proclaim- 
ing it as an axiom, that it is a crime for one human 
being to claim property in another 1 Let him preach 
that doctrine, if he will be consistent, to his ap- 
prentices, or to the apprentices of his neighbor, and 
exhort them to make the application for themselves. 
Will it be said, that the master cannot sell his ap- 
prentice as the slaveholder can sell his slave 1 We 
ask in reply, Is there no slavery where the slave 
2* 



22 SLAVERY. 

cannot be transferred from one master lo another^ 
without his own consent ? Suppose a law to be en- 
acted, forbidding the master to sell his slave, except 
with the slave's consent, and making the slave's 
voluntary signature in the presence of a magistrate 
essential to the validity of the transfer : — is that the 
immediate, unconditional, and unqualified abolition 
of slavery ? Is it said that the master has no pro- 
perty in the person of his apprentice, but only a 
property in his time and labor, a title to his services 1 
We ask in reply. Is it necessary to the existence of 
slavery, that the slaveholder shall have any other 
kind of property in his slave than what the master 
mechanic has in his indented apprentice 1 Suppose 
it to be declared by legislation, or by some judicial 
decision, that the master's property in his slave is 
simply a property in his time and labor, and not in 
his blood and bones, and that the slave is only a 
'^ person held to service or labor" for his lifetime, 
and transmitting the same condition to his chil- 
dren : — would that be the immediate and complete 
abolition of slavery ? 

Shall it be said, then, that slavery consists in the 
obligation to work without wages ? But is not the 
apprentice bound to work without wages? The 
apprentice has indeed a compensation for his labor; 
he does not work for nothing; he receives, ordina- 
rily, his food and clothing, and he receives instruc- 
tion in his trade. And so the slave may have a 
compensation. It is not essential to his condition 
that he shall work for nothing ; it may be that he 
has his daily food, his cabin and his clothing ; it is 
not impossible to imagine that he has food and cloth- 



SLAVERY. 23 

ing for his children, and even a shelter and the 
comforts of animal existence for his aged and dis- 
abled parents ; nay more, he may be provided with 
medical attendance in sickness, and with religious 
instruction on the Sabbath ; and the master may re- 
gard all this as due to him in consideration of his 
services ; while yet his service is the service of a 
slave. Will it be said that his compensation is in- 
adequate 1 We admit it; but are all men slaves 
who work for an inadequate compensation ? In 
how many parts of the world may men be hired, by 
thousands, to work for no other compensation than 
bare shelter and support 1 

Shall we adopt Paley's definition, that '' slavery 
is an obligation to labor for the benefit of the mas- 
ter, without the contract or consent of the servant V^ 
But may not a man sell himself into slavery 1 Did 
not the Hebrew servant, who, at the end of his sixth 
year of servitude declined the privilege of becoming 
free, consent and contract to be a slave forever ? 

We know not how to define slavery more ac- 
curately than by saying. It is that artificial relation, 
or civil constitutiojiy by which one man is invested with 
a property in the labor of another, to whom, by virtue 
of that relation, he owes the duties of protection, sup- 
port, and government, and who owes him, in return, 
obedience and suhmission. The right which a father 
has in his children, is a natural right ; the relation 
which involves it, is a relation instituted by the 
Author of nature. The right which the master has 
in his apprentice, is the right of the father trans- 
ferred, within certain limits, and for the convenience 
and by the consent of the parties, to another person. 



24 SLAVERY. 

But the relation of master and slave has no founda- 
tion in nature ; it is altogether the work of human 
legislation. It is a relation entirely artificial ; it is 
an unnatural constitution of society, arbitrarily in- 
vesting one party with authority and property, and 
binding the other party to obedient and submissive 
labor. 

Now there are those, Ave have reason to believe, 
who think they find in the Scriptures a full justifica- 
tion of slavery ; and who bring proof texts to quiet 
their consciences w^hile they hold their fello^v-men, 
and are resolved to hold them always, in a most de- 
grading bondage. On the other hand, there are men 
who profess to regard it as one of the plainest points 
of revelation, that no man can exercise the owner- 
ship and government of a slave, in any circumstances 
for a single hour, without the most atrocious 
and horrible guilt. The inquiry before us has been 
undertaken with reference to both these opinions. 
In pursuing it, then, we are to examine chiefly what 
light the Scriptures throw on the subject. 

A full investigation of the Scriptures in relation to 
this matter, naturally divides itself into two branches ; 
first, the Mosaic legislation and religion, and secondly, 
the principles and conduct of Christ and his apostles. 

The first point, then, to be examined, is the le- 
gislation of Moses on the subject of slavery. Did the 
great lawgiver of Israel, legislating by Divine inspi- 
ration, approve and sanction slavery 1 If not, did 
he forbid and abolish it on the plan of immediate 
abolition'? The following positions, we think, will 
be found too plain to need much illustration, and too 
well supported to be denied. 



SLAVERY. 



26 



1. Moses did not introduce slavery among the Jews. 
It was even in his time, as it has been ever since, in 
all the countries of the east, an ancient and estab- 
lished institution, incorporated with all the habits of 
the people, and with the entire structure of society. 
As long ago as when Abram and Lot departed out 
of Haran, about four centuries after the flood, they 
took with them, not only '^ the substance which they 
had gathered," but " the souls which they had got- 
ten in Haran."* The patriarch, sojourning and 
wandering in the land of promise, was not a solitary 
traveler ; he was respected as the master and propri- 
etor of a body of servants, of whom ^' three hundred 
and eighteen " were able to bear arms.f And as to 
the nature of the servitude of the souls which he had 
gotten, and the tenure by which they were held, 
the story of Hagar, the '^ bondwoman," seems to be 
a sufficiently palpable illustration.]: The w^ealth of 
Isaac consisted not only in flocks and herds, but in 
" great store of servants. "§ When Jacob returned 
from Padanaram, his wealth was '' oxen and asses, 
flocks, and men-servants, and women-servants. "|| 
Whether the servants of those days were bought and 
sold as merchandise, and at what price, let those 
judge who have read of the sale of Joseph to a 
caravan of Arab traders — a transaction exactly like 
what now takes place in Africa, not to say in this 
country, every day. Such were the ideas and habits 
of the Hebrews, when Moses undertook to give them 
laws. 

* Genesis xii. 5. t Genesis xiv. 14. 

t Genesis xvi. 1-9; xxi. 9-11. § Genesis xxvi. 14. 

II Genesis xxxii. 5. 



25 SLAVEltY. 

2. In these circumstances did the inspired legis- 
lator peremptorily prohibit slavery? No. He ex- 
pected that the people for whom he was legislating 
would continue to hold bond-servants as property; 
and he framed his laws accordingly. Indeed, we 
may say, that slavery is as important a title in his 
laws, as it is in the statute-book of any State in this 
Union. He defines several modes in which persons 
might become slaves. (1.) The man convicted of 
theft, and unable to make a double or fourfold or 
fivefold restoration of the property stolen, was to be 
sold to make out the compensation.* (2.) Some- 
times a man through poverty sold himself or his 
children, or perhaps, was sold, with his family, for 
the payment of his debts ; a wiser method, surely, 
than our Gothic practice of imprisoning the debtor. 
This mode of enforcing the payment of debts, was 
probably an ancient custom. The legislator takes 
it for granted that this will be done, and makes pro- 
vision for it.f (3.) Captives in war, especially \vo- 
men and children, were held as slaves. J (4.) In 
connection with a law protecting the Israelite, who 
through poverty had sold himself, against the rigor- 
ous treatment to which slaves Avere ordinarily sub- 
ject, and providing for his emancipation at a fixed 
period, it is said, " Both th)^ bondmen and thy bond- 
maids which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen 
that are round about you; of them shall ye buy 
bondmen and bondmaids : moreover, of the children 



* Exodus xxii. 1-4. 

t Levit. XXV. 39, 47 ; Exod. xxi. 7 ; Nehem. v. 4. 5. See Michaelis 
on the laws of Moses, vol. ii. pp. 160-163, 306-308. 
t Deut. XX. 14 



SLAVERY. 27 

of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them 
shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, 
which they begat in your land ; and they shall be 
your possession ; and ye shall take them as an in- 
heritance for your children after you, to inherit them 
for a possession."* Such legislation as this, proves 
beyond debate that Moses did not peremptorily pro- 
hibit slavery as a crime. Other particulars are equal- 
ly remarkable. It is enacted, that if a master should 
so strike a slave with a rod, as to cause his immediate 
death, the crime should be punished as murder; but 
the exception is added — strange, not to say shocking, 
to our sensibilities — that if the slave survive the in- 
jury a day or two, the master's pecuniary loss shall 
be considered punishment enough, '' for he is his 
money."! The law — of late made so familiar to 
half the population of this country, by an ingenious 
temperance tract. — which held the owner of a dan- 
gerous ox responsible with his life, if through his 
neglect the ox should cause the death of a man or 
woman, contains a similar exception. If the ox 
" has killed ii man or a woman," — '^ if he have gored 
a son or daughter," the owner is to be put to death 
unless his life be redeemed by a sum of money, at 
the discretion, doubtless, of the magistrate. But, 
^' if the ox shall push a man-servant or maid -servant, 
he (the owner) shall give to their master thirty 
shekels of silver. "| Such a distinction between a 



* Levit. XXV. 44-46. t Exod. xxi. 20, 21. 

X Exod. xxi. 28, 32. See Michaelis on the laws of Moses, vol. iv. 
p. 260. 



28 SLAVERY. 

freeman and a slave, seems to have been necessary 
in making laws for the stiff-necked Israelites; but 
our feelings revolt at it. 

3. Did Moses sanction slavery 1 Not at all. He 
dealt with it as he dealt with polygamy, with arbi- 
trary divorce, with the levirate law, and with the 
old bloody law of the goel or blood-avenger. Legis- 
lating for a people, in many respects barbarous, and 
never remarkably tractable, he wisely considered 
what was practicable in such a case, rather than 
what was simply desirable. Many were the pro- 
visions of the Jewish law, of which Christ might 
have said, as he said of that which permitted arbi- 
trary divorces, ''Because of the hardness of your 
hearts, Moses wrote you this precept." The pro- 
fessed Christian, then, who would set up a justifica- 
tion for slavery, on the ground that the civil laws 
of Moses did not peremptorily forbid it, ought to 
remember, that, b}^ the same reasoning, he may 
justify polygamy, and concubinage, and the divorce 
of a wife at the pleasure of her husband. By the 
same reasoning, he may make it the duty of the 
brother of a deceased husband, to receive as his own 
wife the childless widow, for the sake of perpetuat- 
ing the family and name of the deceased. By the 
same reasoning, he may prove that in every case of 
homicide, from the most malicious to the most acci- 
dental, the nearest relative of the person slain, may 
pursue the slayer, guilty or innocent, and may smite 
him to death wherever he finds him. The only 
question on this point is — Did Moses, with the au- 
thority of an inspired legislator, sanction as right, 
everything which his code did not prohibit and pun- 



SLAVERY. 29 

ish as criminal ? And among Christians, surely, 
that is no question at all. 

4. The Mosaic statutes respecting the relation of 
master and slave, are obviously modifications and 
amendments of a previously existing jus consiLetudi- 
nariuviy^ or common law, and are designed to 
meliorate the condition of the slave, to ^^rotect him 
from oppression, and to promote the gradual disuse 
and abolition of slavery. Here, for the benefit of 
such as have never given their attention distinctly 
to this point, we will state a few particulars. 

(1.) No Hebrew could continue a slave, except 
by his own free consent, for a longer period than 
six years ; and while he continued such, he was to 
be treated only as a hireling, whose wages for the 
six years had been paid in advance. In the year of 
jubilee, too, every Hebrew who had fallen into 
poverty, was to regain his hereditary lands, and 
was, of course, to go free, that he might take pos- 
session of them. t 



* Michaelis on the laws of Moses, vol. i. pp. 9-15. 

t Exod. xxi. 2-6; Deut. xv. 12-18; Levit. xxv. 39-55 ; Mr. Pax- 
ton, pp. 79—84, labors hard to make it out, that these provisions 
applied to all the slaves which the Israelites were permitted to hold. 
His aigument, in brief, is, that all their slaves were to be circumcised ; 
and that, by being circumcised, they became naturalized in Israel, and 
were placed on a level with the descendants of Jacob. But was a cir- 
cumcised slave, therefore, a naturalized Israelite 1 We answer. No ; 
for Moses has given a particular law of naturalization, Deut. xxni.3-9. 
By that law, it was granted to Edomites and Egyptians, as a peculiar 
favor, that the grandchildren of such as should settle in Palestine, might 
" enter into the congregation of the Lord ;" and in regard to the Am- 
monites and Moabites, it is declared, that to the tenth generation, and 
forever, they should be incapable of becoming Israelites. Yet the 
Edomites, not to say the Egyptians, were circumcised ; and it would 
seem, that any stranger who desired to eat the passover, might do so 



30 SLAVERY. 

(2.) The master, who in correcting his slave, 
even with a proper instrument of correction, should 
cause his immediate or speedy death, was to be 
punished, as guilty of homicide. Such a law, 
phrased as it is, cannot easily be understood as any- 
thing else than a limitation of the previously allowed 
power of masters over the persons and lives of their 
servants.* 

(3.) A slave, maimed by his master, was to be- 
come free. The language of the law, indeed, in- 
cludes expressly only two cases of maiming : '' If 
a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his 
maid, that it perish, he shall let him go free for his 
eye's sake ; and if he smite out his man-servant's 
tooth, or his maid-servant's tooth, he shall let him 
go free for his tooth's sake."t But, as Michaelis 
has remarked, the lawgiver, by naming the noblest 
of our organs on the one hand, and on the other, 
one of those organs that can most easily be dispensed 
with, and that are naturally lost as old age ap- 
proaches, plainly intimates that all the other organs 
are to be considered as included. It is not unfre- 
quently the case in the laws of Moses, that a general 
principle, instead of being abstractly announced, is 
inculcated by being involved in two or three par- 
ticulars. 

after being circumcised, Exod, xii. 48. So tiiat it is, at least, doubtful 
whether the circumcision of a slave, and his eating of the passover- 
feast, was designed to make him a Hebrew, in the sense of the law 
now in question. 

Mr. P. also argues that, at any rate, the foreign slave went out free 
in the year of jubilee. But the law of the jubilee, which is found in 
Leviticus XXV., makes a distinction between the foreign servant and 
the Hebrew, expressly in that particular.— See verses 39-46. 

* Exod. xxi 20. t Exod. xxi. 26, 27. 



SLAVERY. 31 

(4.) A female slave, in certain cases, became en- 
titled to the privileges of a wife, or in default of 
these, to her freedom.* The laws here referred to, 
tended in part to protect the chastity of female ser- 
vants, and, in part, to increase the number of free- 
born children. No master who became a father by 
his female slave, increased, in that way, the number 
of persons doomed to bondage. 

(5.) The religious institutions of the Jewish na- 
tion were, in many respects, calculated to afford re- 
lief and privileges to the slave. Being circumcised, he 
was no longer regarded as a heathen, but was bound 
to the worship of the God of Israel. The weekly 
rest of the Sabbath was for him no less than for his 
master ; and the master was expressly enjoined, in 
reference to this privilege of his servants, to remem- 
ber the toilsome bondage of Israel in Egypt.f In 
all the sacred festivals, '' the servant and the hand- 
maid " were to partake, no less than '' the son and 
the daughter," and Israel was to remember, '' thou 
wast a bondman."! The tendency of all these 
things was to create sympathy and kind affection 
between the master and his servants, and to prepare 
the latter for the privileges and honors of freemen. 

(6.) Kidnapping, or the stealing of men to make 
them slaves, was punished with death. § If laws 
affect public sentiment, then such a law against the 
crime of reducing men to slavery, was calculated, 
not only to prevent that particular crime, but also 
to inspire a horror against slavery itself. 



* Exod. xxi. 8-11 ; Deut. xxi. 10-14. t Deut. v. 14, 15. 

t Deut. xvi. 11, 12. § Exod. xxi. 16. 



32 SLAVERY. 

(7.) Runaway slaves from a foreign country 
were not to be given up to their masters, but were 
to be allowed to dwell in the land, wherever they 
could find a home.* One effect of this law would 
be, reciprocal, or rather retaliatory, laws, among 
the neighboring nations, in regard to fugitive slaves 
from Palestine ; so that, whenever the slave of an 
Israelite master should find his condition intolerable, 
a flight of one or two days would almost always 
carry him to some country from which he could not 
be reclaimed. Another effect of this law would be 
to impress strongly on the popular mind, that great 
truth on which the law is founded, namely, the 
truth that every man ought to he a freeman. 

To all these considerations it is to be added, that 
the religious teachings and ethical maxims of Moses 
and the prophets were, in principle and tendency, 
if not in terms, opposed to slaver)'. Let it be re- 
membered, that the law of love is the basis of Mo- 
saic, no less than of Christian morality ; that it was 
expressly enjoined on the Hebrews, as a religious 
duty, to treat strangers and foreigners with kindness;! 
that God, in his revelations, made himself known to 
them, especially as the protector of the poor, and 
the avenger of the oppressed ;| and that, among the 
duties most forcibly urged by indignant prophets, in 
times of sin and judgment, was the duty of letting 
the oppressed go free, and breaking every yoke ;§ 
and it cannot be doubted, that among the Jews the 
influence of their religion conspired with the influ- 



* Deut. xxiii. 15, 16. f Deut. x. 17-19; Exod. xxli. 21. 

i Eccle. V. 8 ; Exod. ii. 23 ] iii. 9. § Isaiah, Iviii. 6. 



SLAVERY. 33 

ence of their laws, to mitigate the character of sla- 
very, and to promote its gradual extinction. 

But, after all, we have exhibited only in part, the 
tendency of the Mosaic institutions, as it respects 
slavery. These institutions ought to be considered 
as a whole, in all their bearings on the increase of 
a homogeneous Hebrew population ; on the industry, 
and social and moral habits of the people ; on their 
mode of agriculture ; on their intercourse with for- 
eign nations ; on the augmentation of wealth among 
ihem, and its distribution into small estates ; in a 
word, on all their character and condition as a peo- 
ple. This most important branch of the inquiry we 
can only hint at. He who can examine it in detail, 
will find, we are sure, that, as these institutions were 
designed to civilize a rude pastoral people, to fix 
them on the soil, and form them into a peaceful agri- 
cultural community, and gradually to extirpate from 
among them all those barbarous usages which could 
not be abolished at a blow ; so, in particular, they 
were fitted to fill the land of Israel with a popula- 
tion who would have no room for foreign slaves, 
and no use for that kind of '^ machinery," and whose 
feelings and habits w^ould be opposed to slavery. 

Accordingly, it is worthy of notice, that as Pales- 
tine became filled with an industrious and peaceful 
Jewish population, the practice of employing bond- 
servants fell into comparative disuse. n the times 
of our Saviour, we find no very distincr. traces of the 
existence of slavery among the Jews of the holy 
land. The only " servants " mentioned in the nar- 
ratives of the four evangelists, except where the 
word occurs in Christ's parables, are the centurion's 



34 SLAVERY. 

servant miraculously healed,* who was most proba- 
bly a slave under the Roman law, and the servants 
of the high priest's palace,! who may have been 
hired servants, but more likely w^ere Jew^s engaged 
for a six years' term of service, according to the Mo- 
saic statute. 

What then are the results of our inquiry respect- 
ing the legislation of the great author of the Hebrew 
polity? Did Moses, legislating for Israel by Divine 
authority, approve and sanctify slavery as an insti- 
tution, or slaveholding as a practice ? By no means. 
Did he peremptorily forbid and abolish it, on the 
plan of immediate abolition? We answ^er. No; if 
he did the Bible is a book past all understanding. 

Before proceeding to an examination of the prin- 
ciples and conduct of the apostles in respect to this 
subject, we pause, that we may ask our southern 
readers to compare their code noir with the slave 
laws of Moses. Is it not true, without any consi- 
derable exception that your laws on the subject 
are all designed for the advantage of the master ; 
to secure him from the loss of his property ; to 
guard him against insurrection ; to strengthen him 
in the exercise of a power so absolute, so odious, 
that nature stands horror-struck at the bare descrip- 
tion ; and to fortify the system, as far as possi- 
ble, against everything that tends to its abolition? 
Is not the only considerable limitation of the power 
of the master a limitation in the wrong direction — 
a limitation against righteousness, against compas- 
sion, against religion ? Is not almost any cruelty 

* Matt. viii. 5-13. t Mark xiv. 65; Luke xxii. 50. 



SLAVERY. 35 

in a slaveholder less offensive — we do not say to 
public sentiment, but to the law — than the kind- 
ness that would give them their freedom, or that 
would even teach them to read the Word of God 1 
Has not every new law, from year to year, pushed 
the same line of policy a little farther '? How con- 
trary to all this were the statutes of the great He- 
brew lawgiver ! His laws affecting the relation of 
master and slave are designed, not to afford the 
strong new advantages and a more perfect impunity 
in oppression, but to relieve the helpless and pro- 
tect the defenceless ; not to construct new entrench- 
ments around a barbarous system, at war with 
human happiness, but rather to cast down its bar- 
riers, and to lay it open to the entrance of improving 
and transforming influences. 

At the same time, it may be remarked, that there 
is a lesson here for those extra-zealous abolitionists 
who permit themselves to be led into denunciations 
against the constitution of the United States, and 
against the memory of all the framers of that august 
compact, on the ground that it does not prohibit 
slavery, but allows to slaveholders the power of 
representing their bondmen in the national legisla- 
ture. Undesirable indeed it is, that slavery should 
exist under the banner of the great republic; — still 
more undesirable that the representatives of slaves 
should sit in the capitol ; but shall we, therefore, 
curse the constitution, and curse the memory of the 
men who framed it and consented to it '? Is not the 
constitution, as it is, the very best that could have 
been framed in those circumstances 1 Is it not far 



36 SLAVERY. 

better than any sane man could hope for, if the 
work were now to be done over again? Were not 
these undesirable concessions necessary, '' because 
of the hardness of the hearts" of the people for 
whom the constitution was to be framed 1 It is 
well known that tlie federal compact has been de- 
nounced, on this account, by certain agitators, in no 
measured terms ; and, unfortunately, certain habits 
of reasoning, prevalent in these days, are calculated 
to give effect to that sort of denunciation. No mat- 
ter how much the peaceful and prosperous union of 
these states has done for the cause of liberty and 
human happiness over all the earth — no matter 
what wars and implacable enmities would have 
raged perpetually between the rival powers of the 
north and south, the east and west, had the plan of 
union under one government been permitted to 
fail — no matter, though all the blood of tlie revolu- 
tion had been in vain, and the enemies of liberal 
institutions had found, in the hopeless anarchy of 
the American republics an irresistible argument 
against popular governments — no matter what des- 
tiny would have been entailed on us and our pos- 
terity, or what darkness would have settled on all 
the hopes of oppressed and fainting nations, had the 
convention of 1788 broken up without forming a 
constitution, or had the constitution formed been re- 
jected by the people — all these things are not even 
the dust of the balance, in the estimation of the 
agitators ; all these things are mere matters of " ex- 
pediency ;" notwithstanding all these things, the 
constitution is to be execrated as a compromise with 



SLAVERY. 37 

slaveholders, and an '' agreement to act in opposi- 
tion to the principles of justice."* Let these de- 
nouncers be consistent ; let them hold up, for the 
execration of philanthropists, the concessions to a 
hard-hearted and stiff-necked people, which are in- 
terwoven with the law given to the Hebrews by the 
inspiration of the God of love. 

We come nov/ to the second branch of the inves- 
tigation which we have undertaken. What was 
the conduct of Christ and his apostles, in relation to 
slavery? Here, as before, we have a twofold in- 
quiry. Did the apostles, in any way, sanction or 
justify slavery ? If not, did they everywhere preach 
to slaveholders, as an essenti I point of religion, the 
duty of instant and unqualified emancipation] 

In regard to the conduct of our Saviour, little 
need be said ; for, as we have already intimated, it 
does not appear that he lived in a slaveholding 

* We are happy to see that some of the immediate abolitionists, as 
they choose to be called, are beginning to take am.^v^ rational and more 
loyal view of the Federal Constitution. In the recently published " Ad- 
dress of the New York City Anti-Slavery Society"- a pamphlet which, 
though written generally in a much better spirit than most of the pub- 
lications of that school, contains some statements quite too uncandid 
to be worthy of refutation— it is stated, with much truth, (1) That the 
clause in the Constitution, under which fugitive slaves are reclaimed 
from the free States, is necessary to reclaim a runaway apprentice, 
and will be indispensable after slavery shall have been abolished. 
And (2) that the provision allowing three-fifths of the slaves to be 
represented in Congress, is in fact a motive to tlie abolition of slavery, 
inasmuch as the slave States, by abolishing slavery, would be enabled 
to represent in Congress five-fifths, instead of three-fifihs of their ne- 
groes. This is a motive which will one day have a powerful op'^ra- 
tion. The abolition of slavery throughout the United States would 
enable the now slaveholding States to send into Congress, imme- 
diately, fifteen or twenty additional representatives. 

3 



38 SLAVERY. 

country, and there is nothing in his personal history 
that can he considered as positively touching the 
subject. If the centurion's servant, healed by 
Christ, was a slave, under the Roman law, as we 
suppose him to have been ; and if the Saviour had 
designed to preach the modern doctrine of imme- 
diate emancipation, surely we should find, in con- 
nection with the record of the miracle, something 
on the subject of setting the servant at liberty. If 
one of our modern abolitionists had been there, 
among the disciples, the centurion surely would 
not have escaped without a hot rebuke. But, does 
all this prove that the Saviour of the world has 
sanctioned, and acknowledged as right, the practice 
of holding innocent men in bondage? Because he 
did not interfere to dissolve the relation of master 
and servant, in that particular instance, does it fol- 
low that he approved of the relation, and that his 
disciples may buy and sell slaves without fear of 
offending him, or of dishonoring his gospell If it 
is said that this servant was not a slave ; we answer, 
that is a possible case : but if we admit it to be a 
fact, the admission only removes the incident out of 
the range of our present inquiry. 

In relation to the apostles, the inquiry is not to 
be so summarily disposed of. As soon as their mis- 
sion carried them out of Palestine, the moment they 
entered into any of the great cities of the empire, 
whether in Syria or Asia, in Greece or Italy — they 
were in the midst of slavery, rank and flourishing. 
It is, of course, to be expected that many allusions 
to slavery will be found in their writings. It is to 



SLAVERY. 39 

be expected that on such a subject their opinions will 
be expressed, and that not indistinctly. 

But, here it is proper to inquire, before examin- 
ing the references to slavery in the apostolic writ- 
ings, What was the slavery which then existed 1 
Did it resemble at all the negro slavery of modern 
times ? The question is not a difficult one to be an- 
swered. Doubtless the laws and usages were various 
in different parts of the empire, according to the 
character of the various subject nations, and their 
ancient civil institutions ; doubtless the lot of the 
slave was less miserable in some provinces than in 
others ; but we presume no scholar will deny that 
slavery, as it existed at the metropolis, and as it 
was practiced by Roman citizens, may fairly be 
taken as a specimen of the slavery which the apos- 
tles encountered in their labors, and to which refer- 
ence is had in their writings. 

The following particulars, respecting Roman 
slavery, are familiar to every schoolboy w^ho has 
studied Adam's Roman Antiquities. 

1. Slaves were held, not as persons, but as things; 
and were bought and sold like any other merchan- 
dise. Fathers might sell their free-born children 
into slavery. 

2. The children of a female slave were the pro- 
perty of her master. There was no regular mar- 
riage among slaves ; but man and woman lived to- 
gether by the permission of the master, in a con- 
nection altogether like the unlegalized and unpro- 
tected marriage of slaves in this country. 

3. The power of the master over his slaves wms 
absolute. He might scourge them, or put them to 



40 SLAVERY. 

death,* at bis pleasure. The lash was the common 
instrument of punishment; but sometimes slaves 
were branded in the forehead ; and sometimes they 
were made to wear a piece of wood, like a yoke, 
around their necks. Sometimes, too, they were 
punished by confinement in a workhouse, or house 
of correction. When slaves were whipped, they 
were suspended with a weight tied to their feet. 

4. If a master was slain at his own house by one 
of his slaves, or if the murderer was not discovered, 
all the slaves in his family were liable to be put to 
death. Tacitusf records a tragedy of this kind, in 
v/hich a family of four hundred slaves, of whom all 
but one were probably innocent, were publicly exe- 
cuted. That affair occurred not far from the time 
when Paul was dwelling in his own hired house at 
Rome. 

5. Slaves could not appear as witnesses in a court 
of justice. Nor could they inherit anything, or make 
a will, except with the consent of their masters. In 
a word, a slave was incapable of possessing proper- 
ty, save as his master gave him the privilege of lay- 
ing aside a peculiuin from the monthly or daily al- 
lowance on which he subsisted, or from the money 
which he might happen to receive in other w^ays. 

6. Slaves were often treated with great cruelty. 
Some, indeed, were educated, and employed as 
clerks, or as teachers of children. Some were the 

* Pone crucem servo—' Meruit quo crimine servus 
Supplicium 1 Quis testis adest \ Quis detulit V Audi. 
Nulla unquam dc morte hominis cunctatio longa est, 
O demens, ita servus homo est 1 Nil fecerit, esto. 
Hocvolo, sic jubeo,sitproratione voluntas.— Juven. Sat. vi. t. 218. 

t Tacit. Annal. xiv. 42, 45. 



SLAVERY. 41 

personal attendants, and humble companions of 
their masters. Not a few, perhaps, were kindly 
and atfectionately treated ; and were permitted to 
cherish the hope of becoming free, and sharing in 
all the immunities and honors of Roman citizenship. 
But the condition of others, and those not few, was 
the lowest to which human nature can be degraded. 
Some served in chains, as the doorkeepers of their 
masters' houses. Some, in chains, were compelled 
to'dig upon a soil, the fruits of which were never to 
be their own. Others toiled in subterranean work- 
houses. 

7. The number of slaves was very great. Great 
the number must have been, when four hundred, 
the inmates of one house, were publicly butchered, 
to expiate a single murder. A wealthy Roman was 
sometimes the proprietor of several thousands. 

These particulars, which are only a part of a 
grammar-schoolbo)^'s learning, are sufficient to show 
what was understood, in Paul's time, by the words 
master and servant, and what was then the differ- 
ence between bond and free. Who will not ac- 
knowledge that the state of things in the Roman 
empire at that time was, at least, almost as bad as 
the state of tilings at present in this Federal Republic? 
The question is, how did the apostles express them- 
selves, and conduct themselves, in respect to the re- 
lation of servitude, as it then existed? 

Passing by, as unimportant, all those allusions 
which merely show the fact, that the first preachers 
of Christianity had to do with a slaveholding people, 
we notice, first, Paul's advice to the slaves who 
were members of the Corinthian Church. ^'Lct 



42 SLAVERY. 

every man abide in the same calling wherein he was 
called: [that is, let ever}^ man be satisfied to con- 
tinue in the same social and secular engagements in 
which he was when he became a Christian.] Art 
thou called, being a servant? care not for it; but if 
thou mayest be made free, use it rather. For he 
that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the 
Lord's freeman ; likewise, also, he that is called, 
being free, is Christ's servant. Ye are bought with 
a price ; be not ye the servants of men."* The 
slave is here exhorted to perform the duties of his 
station without repining at his lot, inasmucli as bond 
and free, who believe in Christ, are alike the ser- 
vants and the freed-men of the Lord ; and yet, he is 
reminded, in language which shows that the apostle 
was thinking how God had forbidden the children of 
Israel to hold each other in bondage, tliat if he may 
be made free, it is unworthy of his dignit}^, as the 
Lord's redeemed freeman, to be any longer the slave 
of a fellow-man. t Nothing is said, in this epistle, 
respecting the duty of masters. Is it because there 
were no masters among the Corinthian Christians? 

In addressing the Church at Ephesus, the apostle 
exhorts not only slaves but slaveholders. ''Ser- 
vants, be obedient to them that are your masters ac- 
cording to the flesh, with fear and trembling, [with 
the utmost respect,] in singleness of heart, as unto 
Christ; not with eye-service, as men-pleasers, but 



* 1 Cor. vii. 20-23. 

■f The language of the apostle evidently shows that he was thinking 
how God had forbidden tlie children of Israel to liold each other as 
bondmen, Levit. xxv. 42. JMr. Paxton remarks, (p. 122,) that the words 
of Paul might well pass for a quotation from Moses. 



SLAVERY. 43 

as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from 
the heart; with good will doing service, as to the 
Lord and not to men ; knowing, that whatsoever 
good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive 
of the Lord, whether he he hond or free. And ye, 
masters, do the same things to them, [conduct your- 
selves towards 3^our servants with the same conscien- 
tiousness,] forbearing threatening, knowing that your 
Master also is in heaven ; neither is there respect of 
persons with him."* 

A passage, entirely parallel to that just cited, oc- 
curs in the Epistle to the Colossians. '^ Servants, 
obey in all things your masters according to the 
flesh, not with eye-service, as men-pleasers, but in 
singleness of heart, fearing God ; and whatever ye 
do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, 
knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the re- 
ward of the inheritance, [the wages of future bles- 
sedness,] for ye serve the Lord Christ. But he that 
doeth wrong, shall receive for the wrong which he 
hath done ; and there is no respect of persons. 
Masters, give to your servants that which is just and 
equal, [or equitable,] knowing that ye also have a 
Master in heaven."! In both these passages it is 
implied, first, that the writer felt slavery to be at best 
a hard and painful condition; and, secondly, that in 
his view, the idea of a master governing his slaves 
conscientiously, equitably, and on Christian princi- 
ples, was not a contradiction. 

It is to be remarked, that one of the bearers of the 
epistle last referred to, was Onesimus, a fugitive ser- 

* Eph. vi. 5-9. -f Col. iii. 22-35; iv. 1. 



44 SLAVERY. 

vant, who, coming to Rome, bad been converted 
under the ministry of Paid, and was now sent back 
by the apostle to bis master Philemon, one of the 
Colossian Christians. The epistle which the return- 
ing fugitive carried to his old master from the im- 
prisoned apostle, cannot but afford some clue to that 
apostle's views of slavery. *' Though I might be 
much bold in Christ, to enjoin thee that which is 
convenient, [proper,] yet for love's sake, I rather 
beseech thee. I beseech thee for m}'^ son, Onesimus, 
whom I have begotten in my bonds ; who in time past 
was to thee unprofitable, but now is profitable to thee 
and to me : whom I have sent again ; thou, therefore, 
receive him, that is my own bowels. Whom I would 
have retained with me, that in thy stead he miglit 
have ministered to me in the bonds of the gospel, 
[in my imprisonment for the gospel.] But without 
thy mind, [consent,] would I do nothing, that thy 
benefit, [kindness,] should not be as it were of ne- 
cessity, but willingly. For, perhaps, he therefore 
departed for a season, that thou shouldst receive him 
forever ; not now as a servant, but above a servant, 
a brother beloved, especially to me, but how much 
more to thee, both in the flesh and in the Lord ? If, 
therefore, thou count me as a partner, receive him 
as myself. If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee 
aught, put that on mine account. I, Paul, have 
written it with mine own hand, I will repay it.'** 
Onesimus was evidently not of the lowest rank of 
slaves, but an educated and intelligent man — ^just 
such a man as the apostle needed to assist him while 

* Philem. 10-19, 



SLAVERt. 45 

a prisoner. Paul, sending him back after bis con- 
version, to Philemon, speaks of the new relation of 
brotherhood which is hereafter to subsist between 
the master and the servant, and prefers a request for 
the emancipation of the converted slave, and offers 
to become responsible for whatever losses Philemon 
may have sustained by his former unfaithfulness. 

Peter, in his epistle to the Christians of ''Pontus, 
Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia," countries, 
some of which were the Guinea — the very slave- 
coast* — of the Roman empire, is naturally led to al- 
lude to the hard condition of slaves, which he does 
in language indirectly expressive of much sympathy. 
The passage need not be quoted. It is of much the 
same tenor with Paul's exhortations to the same 
class of Christians.! He enjoins it upon them, by 
Christian motives, to be conscientiously obedient 
and respectful towards their masters, and to submit 
patiently to the unkindest treatment. 

This kind of preaching to slaves is, in Paul's epis- 
tles to Titus and Timothy, made a part of the duty of 
Christian ministers. To Timothy it is said, ''Let as 



* ' Cappadocian,' was with the Romans another name for slave. 
Cicero says of one of his enemies, ' Ca2:>padocc7n modo abreptum de grege 
vcnalium diceres ' — an expression nearly equivalent with the phrase 
sometimes used at the South, ' He is as stupid as a new negro.' It is 
remarkable that Juvenal, alluding to the degradation of society, occa- 
sioned by the honors and privileges bestowed on emancipated slaves, 
enumerates, as the native provinces of those slaves converted into 
knights, the same countries mentioned by Peter in the inscription of 
his epistle, with the exception of Pontus. 

Faciant equites Asiani, 
Quanquam et Cappadoces faciant equitesque Bithyni, 
Altera quos nudo traducit Gallia td.\o.—Sat. vii. 14. 
t 1 Pet. ii. 18-21. 

3* 



46 SLAVERY. 

many servants as are under the yoke^ ccaint their own 
masters worthy of all honor, that the name of God 
and his doctrine be not bLasphcmed. And they that 
have believing masters, let them not despise them, 
because they are brethren ; but rather do them ser- 
vice, because they are faithful and beloved, partakers 
of the benefit. These things teach and exhort. If 
any man teach otherwise, and consent not to Avhole- 
some words, the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and 
to the doctrine which is according to godliness, he is 
proud, knowing nothing, doting [diseased] about 
questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, 
strife, railing, evil surmisings, etc— from such with- 
draw thyself.''^* Here we see, first, that there were 
bond-servants among the Christians in the region 
where Timothy, as an evangelist, was to superin- 
tend tlie organization of churches, and w^as to put 
in operation the entire system of apostolic institu- 
tions ; secondly, that some of those bondmen had 
masters who were recognized as believers ; thirdly, 
that even at that early period, there were some who 
undertook to infer from the gospel the abolition of 
slavery as a civil institution ; txndi fourthly , that Paul 
advised Timothy to have no partnership with such 
teachers. 

The reader has now before him a full view of 
what the apostles have said respecting slavery, and 
the duties of master and slave. So far as our pre- 
sent inquiry is concerned, the whole may be sum- 
med up in the following remarks : 

1. The apostles have said nothing in vindication 

* 1 Tim. vi. 1-5 ; Titus ii. 9, 10. 



SLAVER V. 47 

of slavery. In all the allusions of the New Testa- 
ment writers to this subject, not a word is found 
which seems as if they approved of one man's hold- 
ing another in bondage ; not a word to encourage 
the master in perpetuating the degraded condition 
of his servants ; not a word to caution him against 
the '^ mistaken philanthropy" of giving them their 
freedom. 

2. It is manifest that the apostles regarded the 
condition of slaves with compassionate sympathy. 
Their language, when they inculcate on servants 
the duties of their station, breathes always the spirit 
of condolence. They enjoin it on every slave who 
may be made free, to accept the higher responsibili- 
ties of a freeman, as more worthy of one redeemed 
by the blood of Christ. We find in their w^ritings 
no pictures of the happiness of servitude ; none of 
the sickening common-places of southern philan- 
thropy about the contentment of slaves, their exemp- 
tion from care, the lightness of their tasks, and the 
superiority of their condition over that of a free pea- 
santry. Every word in the New Testament, that 
touches on slavery, is in a very different tone. 

3. Immediate emancipation on the part of slave- 
holders, was not a condition of membership in the 
apostolic churches. Philemon, a man of consider- 
ation among the saints at Colosse, was a slaveholder, 
Paul expected that Timothy, in fulfilling his office 
of an evangelist, would have occasion to exhort some 
slaves, at least, that had believing masters, ('jtKfrovg 
(^stf-TTora^.) In the church at Ephesus, as well as in 
that of the Colossians, there were so many masters, 
that it seemed proper to address them as a distinct 



48 SLAVERY. 

class. All these men must have been acknowledged 
as credible professors of Christianity. Yet, not one 
word is said by way of enjoining upon them the im- 
mediate emancipation of their servants ; not one 
word which implies that to live in the relation of a 
master, even for an hour, is to live in high-handed 
iniquity ; not one word which intimates any sympa- 
thy with a certain Address to the Presbyterian 
Church, which has been widely circulated at the ex- 
pense, we presume, of some of the leading aboli- 
tionists, (so called,) in the city of New York. 
^' Slaveholding," says that address, '^under every 
possible modification, is man-stealing. Man-steal- 
ing, as combining impiety in principle, falsehood in 
claim, injustice and cruelty without intermission and 
without end, is the most flagrant iniquity which a 
sinner can perpetrate. All profession of religion, 
by a man who thus acts, is a gross deception." Such 
is the modern doctrine of immediate emancipation. 
The master of a slave, U7ider every possible modifica- 
tion of that relation, is guilty of the most flagrant 
iniquity possible ; his crime is one in which impiety 
and falsehood, injustice and cruelty unremitting and 
interminable, are all combined ; and if he attempts 
to make a profession of religion, he is a gross de- 
ceiver. Such were the nidroi bcdnfoTon of whom Paul 
speaks to Timothy. Such was Philemon, wliom 
the great apostle styled, ''our dearly beloved, and 
fellow-laborer." Such . were the ''masters " in the 
churches at Ephesus and Colosse. The apostles 
did not teach immediate abolitionism, nor did they 
form their churches on that basis. 
4. The apostles seem to have taken it for granted, 



SLAVERY. 49 

that the Christian master would do for his slaves all 
that was consistent with their welfare and the pub- 
lic good. So Paul acted in the case of Philemon 
and Onesimus. The slave is sent back to his mas- 
ter, and the master's legal claim is distinctly recog- 
nized. Yet it is taken for granted, that Philemon 
will act with other views than a regard to his own 
pecuniary interest; that he will look on Onesimus 
not as an article of merchandise, but as a man, a 
brother, and will treat him accordingly. It is taken 
for granted that now, since the grace of God has 
taken effect on the once unprofitable slave, and has 
fitted him to be happy and useful under the respon- 
sibilities of freedom, his Christian master will not 
only forgive his past offences, but will send him 
forth free, to be the helper of Paul, or in any other 
way to advance the kingdom of the Saviour. So 
to masters generally, the command was, ' Render to 
your servants that which is right and equitable ;' 
and it was left to an enlightened conscience to 
decide, in each instance, what the principles of 
right and equity required. Of course it was taken 
for granted, that the slave would be treated as an 
intelligent and immortal being ; and that, whenever 
the great rule of equity, the golden rule of love, re- 
quired the slave to be put upon his own resources, 
and set to act under his own guidance, he would be 
emancipated. 

We find the discussion extending itself beyond 
our expectation, and the printer warns us to bring 
it to a conclusion. Let us look, then, at some points 
of Christian duty in regard to slavery, as we have 
to do with it in this country at the present day. 



50 SLAVERY. 

1. Ought the naked fact, that a certahi man is 
the master of slaves, to exclude him, without farther 
inquiry, from the communion of the churches 1 
We answer. No. It may be that he came into that 
relation Avithout any act of his own. It may be that 
he is doing for the welfare of those slaves, conscien- 
tiously and diligently, the most that existing cir- 
cumstances will allow. It may be that if he eman- 
cipates them from under his hand, the sheriff will 
immediately arrest them, and sell them to the highest 
bidder. It may be that he is prosecuting a course 
of measures, which, after less than a seven years' 
" apprenticeship," will result in their real emanci- 
pation. The mere fact that he is invested with a 
certain legal power over the persons of these indi- 
viduals, implying a certain legal title to their ser- 
vices, is not necessarily a crime. The author of 
these letters enslaver}^, while he, was educating his 
servants to take care of themselves, and providing 
their outfit to Liberia, was not a criminal, though 
he w^as still their master, and as such, responsible 
for their good government. The question, in each 
individual instance, is, Whence did this man obtain 
his power over these his fellow-men ? and to what 
ends is he employing it 1 On the answer to this 
question will depend the propriety of allowing his 
claims to be considered as a servant of Christ. If 
he makes it a business to breed slaves for market — 
if he treats rational and immortal beings only as if 
they were cattle — nay, if he does not see carefully, 
not only that their physical wants are supplied, but 
that they are restrained from vice, and properly in- 
structed, especially in the things of their everlasting 



SLAVERY. 5 1 

peace ; and if, after due admonition, he will not 
repent of his iniquity, then treat him as a heathen 
man and a publican. 

2. Ought the mere buying of a slave to exclude 
the buyer from Christian communion? Not the 
mere act of buying. The question is, To what end, 
and with what vie\vs, was the purchase made? A 
friend of ours in the District of Columbia, once 
bought a negro woman with a family of children. 
^ Away with him !' cry the abolitionists — ^ Excom- 
municate him !' But, ^' good friends, sweet friends, 
let us not stir you up to such a sudden rage ;" — 
take your fingers from your ears, and hear the story. 
That woman and her children were for sale, and, 
by the operation of the internal (or, as the word is 
sometimes spelled, not incorrectly, infernal) slave- 
trade, w^ere about to be transported to the extreme 
south. There are philanthropists who would have 
stood by to witness the transaction, and would have 
eased their burthened minds, by letting off a volley 
of execrations. But our friend has taken no de- 
grees in their college. Though not worth a dollar 
beyond his daily earnings, he bought the whole 
family, borrowed the money on his own responsi- 
bility, with the endorsement of a friend, and, if we 
mistake not, owes for it, and pays seven per cent, 
interest for it, to this day. Those slaves are now 
free, not in Liberia, but in America ; and their 
benefactor, a standing mark for the obloquy of some 
who think themselves the only abolitionists, toils on 
in the great cause of suffering humanity, burthened 
with the debt of that purchase. When any of those 
who have arrayed themselves as his enemies, shall 



52 SLAVERY. 

have been guilty of a similar imprudence, we will 
give them credit for being warm-hearted as well as 
hot-headed. But to the question, Shall this man, 
for biiying slaves, be excluded from the commimion 
of the saints ? Often may we commune with him 
in Christian ordinances here ; and be it ours to sit 
down with him at the '^ marriage-supper of the 
Lamb." 

Take another case. Suppose some wealthy indi- 
vidual undertakes to demonstrate, by a public ex- 
periment, the practicability and good economy of 
converting slaves into free laborers. He purchases 
a tract of land in Florida, where no State govern- 
ment can forbid philanthropy to exert itself, but the 
laws and liberties of the Union are his protection. 
Next, he goes into the slave-markets of Virginia, 
and buys fifty or a hundred slaves. These he trans- 
ports to his new plantation ; as their legal master, 
invested with all the powers of government over 
them, he establishes such regulations as he deems 
necessary to their order, their industry, their im- 
provement, and sets them at work, intending to make 
them, as fast as they will indemnify him for the ex- 
pense of the undertaking, the free proprietors of the 
soil on which they labor. Shall such a man be ex- 
communicated for buying slaves? We earnestly 
wish that some of the gentlemen who are expending 
thousands of dollars in a conscientious, (we dare 
say,) but still most unprofitable crusade against 
African colonization, might be induced to divert a 
part of that expenditure to buy slaves for such an 
experiment. 
These cases are stated for the sake of showing that 



SLAVERY. 53 

the crime does not consist in the act of buying, 
but in the purposes and views with which the pur- 
chase is made. The man who, born free and among 
the free, makes himself a slaveholder for the sake 
of gain ; (shame to New England that there are so 
many such,) the man who buys his fellow men, as 
he would buy oxen, simply with a view to his own 
interest, that he may have them to sell again if he can 
sell them at a bargain, or that he may enrich himself 
by their reluctant toil, and when he has done with 
them, leave them to 'heirs he knows not who;' the 
man who buys slaves with any other design than to do 
them all the good he can, is most manifestly an of- 
fender against the law of love, and ought to be dealt 
with as such, by all the churches. He is not only 
guilty of wrong towards the individuals whom he 
purchases, but he gives the full support of his exam- 
ple to the entire system of slavery, and voluntarily 
makes himself a partaker in all the sins which that 
system, by its natural tendency, diffuses through 
society. 

3. What ought the slaveholder to do? What 
ought he to do in regard to his own slaves'? Obvi- 
ously, he ought to do for them just what, on a care- 
ful consideration of their character and all their cir- 
cumstances, he sees will be most for their good ; we 
do not speak here of the public good, because their 
good and the 'public good are, in reference to this 
question, inseparable. Let him consider, not only 
their actual condition, but their liabilities. Be it 
that their master is kind and attentive to all their 
wants ; be it that they are well governed, and sup- 
plied with religious instruction ; be it even that they 



54 SLAVERY. 

are contented with their present lot, and are nnwil- 
ling to change phices with the free blacks around 
them ; all this w^eighs but little in the scale against 
their liabilities. They are liable, as chattels, to be 
attached and sold for their master's debts; and, 
whatever commercial revolution, whatever accident, 
involves him in pecuniary embarrassment, is likely 
to bring on them a distress, compared with which 
bankruptcy and poverty are nothing. So, on the 
death of their master, when his estate comes to be 
settled and divided, they are liable to the same fate ; 
all their connexions may be sundered; and, torn from 
all that is home to ihem, they ma}^ be consigned to 
a condition the more terrible for the former allevia- 
tions of their lot. What, then, does a wise regard 
for their welfare — what does imperative justice to- 
wards them — demand of their master? Ought he 
not, if possible, and as soon as possible, to secure 
them against such contingencies 1 Against such 
contingencies they cannot be secured, as the laws 
now are, but by being made free. Does he ask. How 
can I make them free? We answer. You can edu- 
cate them for liberty ; and, as fast as the}^ beconie 
at all competent to take care of themselves, you can 
put them in the way of earning a passage to Africa, 
or let them choose their own course to whatever 
country will open its doors to receive them. 

But w^hat ought the slaveholder to do in regard to 
the system of slavery? First of all, lie ought, on 
every fit occasion, to bear his testimony against it, 
and against the legislation which creates and sup- 
ports it. He ought to declare himself, fearlessly, 
the enemy of slaverv, and the friend of whatever 



SLAVERY. 55 

will mitigate the curse, or promote its peaceful abo- 
lition. Where such an evil pervades society, offend- 
ing the heavens with its atrocity, and cursing the 
very soil with its afflictive influences, if any indivi- 
dual has a right to be silent, that individual is not 
the slaveholder. His silence respecting such an evil, 
is approbation ; his neutrality, is partisanship. The 
timidity which seals his lips, makes him, in fact, an 
abettor and supporter of all those laws, the mere di- 
gest of which is enough to make the brow of an 
American crimson with shame. If all those men in 
the southern States, who are, in conscience and in 
judgment, dissatisfied with slavery — who are con- 
vinced that it must be abolished, and desire to see 
that consummation peacefully acconiplished — would 
but speak out like freemen, there would soon be in 
those States such a demonstration of public opinion, 
as would make the advocates of slavery cower and 
hide their heads for shame. 

Yet, in order that the slaveholder's testimony 
against slavery may be complete and effectual, his 
example must accord with it. If, on his own plan- 
tation, he perpetuates the system just as he received 
it from his predecessors ; if his slaves, born, living, 
dying, in the lowest condition to which humanity 
can be degraded, transmit that condition unmitigated 
to their children ; if he does not set himself in earn- 
est, and like a working-man, to the work of ele- 
vating and blessing those whose destiny is commit- 
ted to his hands — no matter what opinions he may 
express hostile to the system — the testimony of his 
example is recorded for slavery, slavery as it is, sla- 
very forever. The man who emancipates his slaves, 



56 SLAVERY. 

and places them where they will be free indeed, 
whether in Liberia or in Hayti, whetlier in the Brit- 
ish West Indies or on the prairies of Illinois, bears a 
testimony against slavery, w^hich the consciences of 
his neighbors cannot resist, and which he may think 
of with pleasure on his dying bed. 



THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY.* 



[quarterly christian spectator, 1S33.] 



It cannot be doubtedj that much of the dispute 
which exists at the present time among- those who 
are seeking the extinction of slavery, is to be as- 
cribed to some mutual misunderstanding in regard 
to the import of terms. One class of philanthropists, 
among whom the author of this book has recently 
become a standard-bearer, insist on Avhat they call 
the immediate, unqualified, complete abolition 
of slavery. Another class, whose philanthropy is 
equally unquestionable, think that though the imme- 
diate and universal emancipation of two millions of 
slaves may be better than the perpetuity of slavery, 
a progressive and gradual subversion of the fabric 
of society now existing in the southern States would 
be much more desirable, as respects the well-being 
of both the slaves and their masters, and as respects 
all those great interests of the human race, which 
are confessedly involved in the result. Between 
these two classes — strange to tell — has arisen con- 
tention, such as turns the very temple of our reli- 



* Lectures on Slavery and its Rebiedy. By Amos A. Phelps, 
Pastor of Pine street Church, Boston. Published by the New England 
Slavery Society, 1834. ISmo. pp. 284. 



58 THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 

gioiis anniversaries into a scene of clamor and vio- 
lence. 

We set up no claim to be considered peculiarly dis- 
interested or impartial in this controversy. It is not 
for us to pretend to act as umpires. Our readers all 
know, that our sympathies are neither with the ad- 
vocates and apologists of slavery, nor with the cru- 
saders for immediate and universal emancipation. 
We have taken our ground with that class of Chris- 
tian philanthropists, who, reasoning not from the 
abstract equality of all men, as to political rights, 
but from the great law of love, believe, first, that abo- 
lition in almost any form, is better than perpetual 
and immitigable slavery; and secondly, that the 
immediate emancipation of two millions of slaves in 
the United States, would be far less beneficent, and 
therefore far less equitable towards the slaves them- 
selves — whose interests and rights in the matter are 
first to be consulted— than some more progressive 
change of their relations to the other classes of soci- 
ety. Yet, unless we deceive ourselves, we are not 
committed on this subject, so as to be unwilling to 
learn. The subject has been much in our thoughts 
for years; and as we are sure, that we understand it 
now better than when we began to study it, so we 
confidently expect to learn more and more in years 
to come. Our discussions of this subject, as of every 
other, are pursued, we trust, for truth rather than 
for victory. And though we may be sometimes ex- 
cited — unduly excited, perhaps, by the treatment we 
receive from men of whom we have a right to expect, 
if not the courteous bearing of gentlemen, that Chris- 
tian candor and kindness which is far better — we 



THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 59 

Still hope, that no personal feelings of ours will lead 
us to pervert clear testimony, or will hinder us from 
acknowledging the force of argument. 

The first thing necessary to the adjustment of the 
controversy, between the two parties of those who 
cherish a common enmity against slavery, is, that 
we have a distinct and right understanding of the 
terms ' abolition' and ' emancipation,' as they are 
used in this controversy. It is common with im- 
mediate abolitionists, in their arguments on the sub- 
ject, to describe in the strongest terms, some of the 
horrors of that slavery which exists in the southern 
States ; to deal out certain aphorisms about inalien- 
able rights ; and to infer, that every slave in the 
United States ought to be emancipated instanta- 
neously, and that all slavery ought to be instanta- 
neously abolished. What do they mean? is the 
first question. Do they make a right use of lan- 
guage 1 is another question. 

To take an example — the authenticity of which 
will not be called in question — the ^ National Anti- 
Slavery Convention,' in their declaration of prin- 
ciples, argue as follows : — 

' Those, for whose emancipation we are striving — constituting 
at the present time at least one-sixth part of our countrymen — 
are recognized by the law, and treated by their fellow-beings as 
marketable commodities — as goods and chattels — as brute beasts ; 
are plundered daily of the fruits of their toil without redress ; 
really enjoying no constitutional nor legal protection from licen- 
tious and murderous outrages upon their persons ; are ruthlessly 
torn asunder — the tender babe from the arms of its frantic mo- 
ther — the heart-broken wife from her weeping husband — at the 
caprice or pleasure of irresponsible tyrants. For the crime of 
having a dark complexion, they suffer the pangs of hunger, the 



60 THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 

infliction of stripes, and the ignominy of brutal servitude. They 
are kept in heathenish darkness, by laws expressly enacted to 
make their instruction a criminal offence. * * * 

No man has a right to enslave or imbrute his brother — to hold 
or acknowledge him, for one moment, as a piece of merchandise 
— to keep back his hire by fraud — or to brutalize his mind by de- 
nying him the means of intellectual, social, and moral improve- 
ment. 

The right to enjoy liberty is unalienable. To invade it, is to 
usurp the prerogative of Jehovah. Every man has a right to his 
own body — to the products of his own labor— to the protection 
of law — and to the common advantages of society. It is piracy 
to buy or steal a native African, and subject him to servitude. 
Surely the sin is as great to enslave an American as an Afri- 
can. 

Therefore we believe and affirm— That there is no difference, 
in principle, between the African slave-trade and American sla- 
very ; 

That every American citizen, who retains a human being in 
involuntary bondage as his property, is, according to scripture, a 
man-stealer ; 

That the slave ought instantly to be set free, and brought under 
the protection of law ^ * * * * * 

That all those laws which are now in force, admitting the 
right of slavery, are therefore before God utterly null and void ; 
being an usurpation of the Divine prerogative, a daring infringe- 
ment on the law of nature, a base overthrow of the very founda- 
tions of the social compact, a complete extinction of all the rela- 
tions, endearments, and obligations of mankind, and a presump- 
tuous transgression of all the Holy Commandments— and that 
therefore they ought to be instantly abrogated.' 

We quote this passage, not to argue with it, but 
to inquire, What do these people mean by imme- 
diate emancipation 1 Take the fi st paragraph, on 
which, if wc mistake not, the whole argument waS 
supposed by the signers of that address, to depend. 
That paragraph seems to be the definition of that 



THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. Qi 

state of things which ought to be immediately abol- 
ished — the description of that slavery from which 
the slaves ought to be immediately delivered. Sup- 
pose, then, the abolition of that state of things to 
have taken place. Suppose the slaves to have been 
actually delivered from the wrongs above recited. 
What is the changed The slaves are no longer 

* recognized by the law, or treated by their fellow- 
beings, as marketable commodities, as goods and 
chattels, as brute beasts ;' they are henceforth 
" PERSONS held to service,^' They are no longer 

* plundered of the fruits of their toil ;' the law takes 
care effectually that they shall have such guardian- 
ship, support, and comfort, as shall be a full equiva- 
lent for their labor. They are no longer ' destitute 
of constitutional and legal protection from licentious 
and murderous outrages on their persons ;' the law, 
through the ministration of courts and officers insti- 
tuted for the purpose, guards them, as effectually as 
other subjects of the law are guarded against vio- 
lence and abuse. They are no longer ' ruthlessly 
lorn asunder — the babe from its mother, the wife 
from her husband — at the caprice or pleasure of ir- 
responsible tyrants;' it is provided by law, that 
every master shall be held responsible for all his 
treatment of his servants — that families of slaves 
shall not be separated without their own consent — 
and that no slave shall be transferred from one mas- 
ter to another, without his own voluntary subscrip- 
tion (if he be an adult, or the subscription of his 
parents, if he be an infant,) to the instrument of 
transfer. They no longer ' suffer the pangs of hun- 
ger, the infliction of stripes, and the ignominy of 

4 



62 THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 

brutal servitude, simply for the crime of having a 
dark complexion ;' they are well fed ; their rations 
are forfeited only by the apostolic rule, as a punish- 
ment for indolence ; stripes are inflicted on them 
only for evil-doing, at the sentence of a magistrate, 
or if you please, other more civilized penalties have 
superseded the infliction of stripes ; their servitude 
has ceased to be brutal. They are no longer '' kept 
in heathenish darkness, by laws expressly enacted 
to make their instruction a criminal offence ;" — the 
face of legislation has been turned the other v;ay ; 
strong and thorough enactments have provided for 
their instruction at the public expense ; and the 
master, whose slaves are found untaught, is held 
guilty of a crime against the prosperity and safety 
of the State. Suppose all this to be a reality. Is 
this what is meant by emancipation, immediate and 
complete? Is this the instant and unqualified abo- 
lition of slavery? Tell us not, that this must of 
course result in sweeping away the last vestiges of 
servitude. The question is not, what will it grow 
to — but what is it? Is it immediate abolition — in- 
stantaneous, universal emancipation? 

We answer. No. Emancipation — abolition, means 
more than all this. All this may be, while yet the 
slaves have not begun to be their own masters. 
There is no emancipation till the slave is made a 
free man. All short of this, is the improvement of 
his condition, the alleviation of his bondage. To 
say, that the slave is ''brought under the protection 
of the law," is something short of saying, that he 
is '^ instantly set free." To make the slave an ap- 
prentice for life, or for a term of years, or for a single 



THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. ^3 

year; to establish, that he is not a chattel, but a 
person ; to secure for him an equitable compensation 
for his toil ; to protect him against abuse ; to legal- 
ize and guard his domestic relations ; to provide 
for his moral and religious instruction, and for the 
education of his children, is not of course to make 
him instantaneously a free man. All this is not all 
that the convention mean by emancipation, when 
they get among their abstractions. There they de- 
mand for the slave, not merely a legal personality, 
not merely protection, compensation for labor, do- 
mestic rights, and the means of instruction ; but 
liberty — inalienable liberty — liberty which is his al- 
ready, and always has been, save as he has been 
and is precluded from the enjoyment of it by *' laws 
which before God are utterly null and void." Do 
they understand the extent of their demand ? Do 
they intend to denounce, as an '^ usurpation of the 
prerogative of Jehovah," any law which, regard- 
ing the slave as a minor, an infant, incompetent 
for the present to control himself, should provide 
employment for him, and forbid him to stroll away 
from it — should declare him incapable of making 
contracts, except under the direction and advice of 
his conservator — should regulate the application and 
expenditure of his earnings, and should make ar- 
rangements for his being '' gradually" introduced 
into the privilege of self-employment, of self-con- 
trol, and of disposing of his own earnings at his 
own pleasure ? Is the immediate emancipation for 
which they contend, the emancipation inferable 
from their abstract principles % Or is it merely the 



54 THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 

abolition of those particulars enumerated in their 
description of slavery 7 

We have before us, in the '^ Preamble and Con- 
stitution of the Anti-Slavery Society of Lane Semi- 
nary," the following '' exposition of immediate 
emancipation," given for the very purpose of '' pre- 
venting misapprehensions." *' It has been exten- 
sively adopted," say the writers of that document, 
''as expressing the views of abolitionists, and em- 
bodies substantially our own." We doubt not, that 
it was intended to express fearlessly all that they 
mean, and all that they do not mean, by immediate 
emancipation : — 

' "By immediate emancipation, we do not mean that the slaves 
shall be turned loose upon the nation, to roam as vagabonds and 
aliens — nor 

That they shall be instantly invested with all political rights 
and privileges — nor 

That they shall be expelled from their native land to a foreign 
clime, as the price and condition of their freedom. 

But we do mean — that instead of being under the unlimited 
control of a few irresponsible masters, they shall really receive 
the protection of law ; 

That the power which is invested in every slaveholder, to 
rob them of their just dues, to drive them into the field like 
beasts, to lacerate their bodies, to sell the husband from his wife, 
the wife from her husband, and children from their parents, shall 
instantly cease ; 

That the slaves shall be employed as free laborers, fairly com- 
pensated and protected in their earnings; 

That they shall be placed under a benevolent or disinterested 
supervision, which shall secure to them the right to obtain secu- 
lar and religious knowledge, to worship God according to the 
dictates of their consciences, and to seek an intellectual and 
moral equality with the whites." ' 



THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 65 

In this definition, or, as the young men of the 
Lane Seminary choose to call it, this " exposition 
of immediate emancipation," the only particular 
which implies emancipation at all, in the sense of 
investing the slaves with freedom, is the demand, 
" that the slaves shall be employed as free labor- 
ers." That expression, taken by itself, might be 
understood to mean, that they are to be immediate- 
ly free to labor or not to labor at their pleasure, free 
to find employment for themselves according to their 
liking, and free to dispose of their earnings accord- 
ing to their own discretion. But against such a con- 
struction, the writers seem to have guarded at the 
outset, by saying, '' We do not mean, that the 
slaves shall be turned loose upon the nation, to 
roam as vagabonds and aliens." In other words, 
they do not mean, that the slaves are to be imme- 
diately invested with self-control. 

This, if we understand the meaning of words, is 
not immediate emancipation. The slave, we re- 
peat, is not emancipated, till he becomes a free man. 
You may make the master responsible, and limit 
his power. You may take the slave out of the power 
of his master entirely, and put him under an over- 
seer appointed by the public. You may do for his 
physical comfort, for his protection, for his instruc- 
tion, whatever seems needful. But he is not eman- 
cipated, till he goes forth, like the freed apprentice 
at the expiration of his indentures, his own master, 
'Moose to roam" whithersoever he pleases. 

No man can tell what abolition is, till he can first 
tell what slavery is. The immediate abolition of 
slavery, is the immediate annihilation of that state 



66 THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 

of things which the word slavery denotes. Mr. 
Phelps, in the book before us, is the first immediate 
abolitionist whom we remember to have met with, 
who was not too immediate — in too much haste for 
abolition, to undertake a distinct definition of the 
thing to be abolished. '^ Slaver}^," he tells us, '^ is 
an assumed right of property in man; or, it is the 
principle, admitted in theory, and acted on in prac- 
tice, that in some cases, each individual being his 
own judge in the case, it is lawful to hold property 
in man.'' He accompanies this definition with 
several pages of explanation, from which we learn, 
that, in his view, wherever a man holds his fellow- 
man as property, as not a person but a thing, ' such 
as an ox or a horse,' there is slavery, and there 
only. It would be unfair, after his explanations, to 
infer from the expression, " property in man," that 
he condemns as slaveholding, the legal property of 
the master in the time, strength, and skill, acquired 
or acquirable, of his apprentice. By '^ holding 
property in man," he means simply, '^ holding man 
as property" — simply holding and treating a rational 
and accountable creature of God, a brother of the 
human family, as a thing without rights, a mere 
article of merchandise. The thing, then, which is 
to be immediately abolished, and the extinction of 
which is all that is necessarily meant by immediate 
abolition, if Mr. Phelps' definition of slavery is a 
true one, is nothing else than the practice of own- 
ing men, or rather of assuming and claiming to own 
them, as chattels. 

This definition of slavery is a very compendious 
method of proving, that the relation of the slave- 



THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 57 

holder to his slaves is invariably, simply, and inex- 
cusably sinful. Our objection to it is, that it is not 
a definition of all servitude, but only of that servi- 
tude which implies sin on the part of the master. 
It was obviously framed with a view to the propo- 
sition — All slaveholdingis criminal. It was framed 
by a mind desirous of giving to its own positions a 
fair aspect, at least, of reason and consistency, and 
seeking a basis on which to construct the doctrine 
of immediate emancipation — a doctrine that shall 
make every master of slaves, in all conceivable cir- 
cumstances, and without any possibility of explana- 
tion or defence, an oppressor, a man-stealer, a pirate, 
an enemy of the human race. If we understand 
the meaning of terms, a man may be constituted by 
law the master of slaves, and may exercise over 
them all the duties of guardianship and government, 
without considering them or treating them as pro- 
perty, and may yet be a slaveholder — the master of 
slaves, in the common acceptation of those terms 
among all w4io speak the English language. Those 
slaves are slaves, so long as they are not emanci 
pated. They are not emancipated, as common 
sense understands emancipation, till they cease to 
be under the control and guardianship of another. 

Mr. Phelps' definition of emancipation corre- 
sponds, as we might expect, with his definition of 
slavery. In answer to the question, '' What does 
your immediate emancipation mean 1" he says : — 

< It is simply, that the slaves be at once delivered from the 
control of arbitrary and irresponsible power, and, like other men, 
put under the control of equitable laws, equitably administered. 
Slavery, as I have shown, is the principle, that man, in some 



68 THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 

cases, at his own discretion, may hold his fellovv-man as pro- 
perty. This, adopted as a practical principle, is slavery ; rejected 
as s. practical principle, is slavery rejected. Immediate Emanci- 
pation, then, means that slaveholders, as individuals, and as a 
community, should at once give up this as a principle of action, 
and so doing, give up all that treatment which is based upon 
it, and thus put their slaves on the footing of men, and under 
the control of motive and law. It is, for example, that England 
should at once yield the principle of taxing us at pleasure, 
^vithout our consent; and in this one act yield, of course, all 
the treatment growing out of, and based upon that principle. 
Or more specifically, immediate emancipation means. 

1. That the slaveholder, so far as he is concerned, should 
cease at once to hold or employ human beings as property, 

2. That he should put them at once, in h:s regard and treat- 
ment of them, on the footing of men, possessing the inalienable 
rights of man. 

3. That instead of turning them adrift on society, uncared 
for, he should offer to employ them as free hired laborers, giv- 
ing them, however, Hberty of choice, whether to remain in his 
service or not :* 

4. That from this starting point — this emancipation from sla- 
very itself, he should at once begin to make amends for the past, 
by entering heartily on the -nvork of qualifying them for, and 
elevating them to all the privileges and blessings of freedom and 

* Suppose some of them are children, without parents, boys at fifteen 
years of age. Ought he to give them that " liberty of choice 1" Sup- 
pose one of them, at the age of thirty, is but a boy of larger growth, as 
ignorant, as unfitted to employ himself, as incompetent to take care of 
and use his own earnings, as a child. Ought he to give to such a one 
that liberty of choice 1 Again, what does that liberty of choice amount 
to, as the laws are in the Southern States 1 To what but a free choice 
between going forth and being arrested and sold by the sheriff, on the 
one hand, and on the other hand, a continuance under the government 
and protection of his old master 1 Not to leave an unfair impression 
respecting Mr. Phelps' meaning, we add, that he himself says, on the 
preceding page, " We would not turn the slaves adrift on society, if we 
could. So far from it, we are opposed to such a measure. We insist, 
even, that the master has no ktght thus to set them afloat on soci- 
ety, unlocked after and uncared for." 



THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. ^9 

religion ; — thus doing what he can to emancipate them from their 
ignorance, degradation, &c. — in other words, from the conse- 
quences of slavery, as well as from the thing itself. 

Thus much in respect to the individual. In respect to the 
community, as such, the scheme means, 

1. That, in its collective capacity, it should yield the principle 
of property in man, and thus cease to recognize any human heing 
as the property of another. 

2. That, by wise and equitable enactments, suited to the vari- 
ous circumstances of the various classes of its members, it should 
recognize them, all alike, as men— as subjects of equal law, 
under its, and only its, control, to be deprived of ' life, liberty and 
the pursuit of happiness,' on no account but that of crime, and 
then, by due and equitable process of law. 

And farther, in respect to those slaves who might be disposed 
to leave their master's service, and become idle vagrants in soci- 
ety, the scheme means, 

1. That they should come under the control of vagrant laws- 
just as white vagrants do. 

2. That, if they commit crimes, they should be tried and con- 
demned like other criminals, by due process of law.' 

We understand by abolition, much that is not in- 
cluded in Mr. Phelps' description of it. Slavery, 
according to our definition, is that artificial relation^ 
or civil institution^ hy which one man is invested with 
a property in the labor of another^ to ivhoin, hy virtue 
of that relation^ he owes the duties of protection^ sup- 
port and government') and who owes him^ in return^) 
obedience and submission. Our notion of the aboli- 
tion of slavery, is the entire destruction of that 
artificial constitution of society, which takes away 
from one man the power of self-control, and puts 
him under the protection and control of another. 
The immediate emancipation of a slave by his mas- 
ter, is the instantaneous dissolution of the relation 
4* 



70 THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 

in that individual instance. The immediate aboli- 
tion of slavery, in a state or country, is the instan- 
taneous dissolution of that relation between all the 
masters and all the slaves, by some sudden violence, 
or by some act of legislation. While the slave is 
passing through a period of pupilage, controlled by 
the discretion of another, his emancipation may be 
in progress, but it is not complete. While the slaves 
of a country are considered by the law as not yet 
fully competent to the responsibility of directing their 
own movements and employments, so long — though 
the process of abolition may be going forward with 
great rapidity, and though the result may be as sure 
as the progress of time, and though the statute-book 
may have fixed the date at which the slaves shall 
be left to their own discretion — slavery is not com- 
pletely abolished. 

In taking our stand, then, against immediate 
emancipation, as the duty of the individual master, 
and against immediate abolition as the duty of the 
Legislature, we do not oppose what Mr. Phelps, and 
men like him, of logical and calculating minds, ar- 
gue for, under those names. As for the thing wdiich 
alone they profess to recognize as slavery, we hold 
it to be invariably sinful. As for the thing, which, 
when they attempt to speak accurately, they call 
emancipation, we hold it to be the plainest and first 
duty of ever}?- master. As for the thing, which they 
describe as the meaning of immediate abolition, we 
hold it to be, not only practicable and safe, but the 
very first thing to be done for the safety of a slave- 
holding country. The immediate abolition against 
which we protest, as perilous to the Commonwealth 



THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. >Jl 

and unjust to the slaves, is a different thing from that 
which the immediate abolitionists think they are 
urging on the country. 

Why, then, dispute about words? Why not let 
these men state their object, and call it by what 
name they choose ? We answer, because words in 
such a case are not mere breath, but things, and 
things of great importance in their effect on the pub- 
lic mind, and in their effect on those who use them. 
''In questions of philosophy or divinity, that have 
occupied the learned, and been the subject of many 
successive controversies, for one instance of mere 
logomachy," says Coleridge, " I could bring ten in- 
stances of logodcedaly, or verbal legerdemain, which 
have perilously confirmed prejudices, and withstood 
the advancement of truth, in consequence of the ne- 
glect of verbal debate, that is, the strict discussion of 
terms." This sagacious remark is, at least, as true 
respecting questions of political right, and of practi- 
cal morality, as it is respecting questions of abstract 
philosophy, or scientific theology. In the present 
instance, it is not mere logomachy to dissent strongly 
from these immediate abolitionists ; there is, in their 
use of terms, a certain logical sleight-of-hand, which 
perplexes, irritates and inflames the public, and the 
influence of which on their own minds, combining 
with the exciting character of the subject, and with 
the peculiar temperament of some among their lead- 
ers, tends to embitter their philanthropy, and to turn 
their sense of right into something too much like 
rancor. 

The sophism by which they unwittingly impose 
on their own minds, and inflame the minds of others, 



72 THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 

is this: the terms ^'slavery," ^^slaveholding," '^im- 
mediate emancipation," Slc, having one meaning 
in their definitions, and, to a great and unavoidable 
extent, another meaning in their denunciations and 
popular harangues. Thus they define a slaveholder 
to be one who claims and treats his fellow-men as 
property — as things — as destitute of all personal 
rights ; one, in a word, whose criminality is self-evi- 
dent. But the moment they begin to speak of slave- 
holders in the way of declamation, the word, which 
they have strained from its proper import, springs 
back to its position, and denotes any man who stands 
in the relation of overseer and governor to those 
whom the law has constituted slaves ; and conse- 
quently every man who, in the meaning of the laws, 
or in the meaning of common parlance, is a slave- 
holder, is denounced, with unmeasured expressions 
of abhorrence and hate, as an enemy of the species. 
"What is the effect of this on their own minds ? What 
— on the minds of those who happen, from one cause 
or another, to be ripe for factious and fanatical ex- 
citement against the south 1 What — on the minds 
of those who, without unraveling the sophistry of 
the case, know that many a slaveholder is conscien- 
tious, and does regard his slaves as brethren ? What 
— on the minds of those slaveholders themselves, 
who are conscious of no such criminality? So of 
immediate emancipation. They define that to be an 
immediate cessation from the sin of claiming and 
treating men as chattels ; but when they begin to 
urge this duty, in appeals to popular feeling, the 
phrase ''immediate emancipation," cannot be hin- 
dered from meaning an immediate discharge of the 



THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 73 

slave from all special guardianship and government, 
and his immediate investiture with the power of 
self-control. This, they are understood to mean by 
the great mass of those who hear them, and this 
they do actually imply in many of their appeals, not- 
withstanding their definitions and restrictions. And 
what is the effect 1 The public understands them as 
demanding immediate and complete emancipation, 
in the obvious meaning of the terms ; and the public 
at large, north and south, east and west, denounces 
them as visionary and reckless agitators. Hence 
it is, that even in those States where the hatred of 
slavery is most pervading and most intense, the call 
for an immediate abolition meeting, is so often the 
signal for some demonstration of popular indigna- 
tion. What is the effect on themselves ? Convinced, 
as they are, by their definition, of the self-evident 
duty of immediate emancipation, as they define it, 
and of the indispensable necessity of that emancipa- 
tion, as preliminary to any other effort for the ben- 
efit of the slaves, they forget that immediate eman- 
cipation, in the ordinary acceptation of terms, is not 
equally a self-evident duty, and equally indispensa- 
ble, as preliminary to other efforts ; and so they look 
with contempt, with dislike, and, unless they are 
very watchful over their own spirits, with something 
akin to malignity, on the efforts now made at the 
south, by Christians of various denominations, for the 
thorough religious instruction of those held in bond- 
age. They ^' must husband their strength." They 
" have no energies to waste in the chase of phan- 
toms." They ^'cannot afford to be diverted from 
the main object by eloquent speeches, and touching 



74 THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 

appeals, about plans of instruction." They declare, 
peremptorily, that '•' all attempts at instruction are 
a real evil." Those attempts may, indeed, inform 
the mind of the slave with ^* truths which are essen- 
tial to his salvation," but still they are to be depre- 
cated as "« real evil,^^ inasmuch as slavery without 
instruction is so much more fertile in horrors, where- 
withal to garnish the appeals of abolitionists, and to 
rouse the public mind to action. If such a man as 
Mr. Phelps, (see p. Ill of the work before us,) a 
minister of the gospel, with a mind gifted by nature, 
and disciplined by education, can be deluded by this 
^'verbal legerdemain" into the expression of such 
sentiments, what may we not expect from men of a 
lower order as to intellect and spirit. 

We say, then, we cannot consent to be enrolled 
among the doctors or disciples in this school of im- 
mediate abolition. Though their immediate abolition 
may be a harmless thing, as they define it, they in- 
sist on arming that harmless thing with a most harm- 
ful name. Their well-intended definitions, unable 
to overcome that intrinsic power by which words re- 
tain their popular signification, define only to mystify, 
and mystify only to irritate. 

We know it is often said, that any doctrine short 
of immediate emancipation, puts the conscience of 
the slaveholder asleep, and justifies him in trans- 
mitting slavery unmitigated to another generation. 
But nothing can be more unwarranted than such an 
assertion. The duty of immediate emancipation is 
one thing. The immediate duty of emancipation is 
another thing. That duty, the present duty of begin- 
ning the emancipation of his slaves, the instant duty of 



THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 75 

commencing a process Avith them, which shall infalli- 
bly result in their complete liberation, at the earliest 
date consistent with their well-being-, may be urged 
at once on every slaveholder as a direct and indis- 
putable corollary from the great law of love. Such a 
process, under whatever form it may be commenced, 
must imply at the outset, that, in the estimation of the 
master at least, the slave is no longer a chattel, but 
a person ; no longer a thing, but a man, invested 
with the majesty of God's image, and endowed with 
the rights that belong to God'sintelligent and account- 
able creature. 

Here, then, let the public sentiment of the country 
speak out for the emancipation of slaves, and for the 
abolition of slavery. This is the gradual abolition 
which we stand ready always to advocate, without 
the liability to mean one thing when we define it, 
and another thing when we urge it. Let it be ever}^- 
where insisted on, as the first point to be carried, 
that to hold men as property, to claim them, and use 
them, and dispose of them, as things without person- 
ality, and without rights, is a sin, with which neither 
humanity nor religion can have any compromise. 
On this point, the north can be made to speak through 
all the organs of public sentiment, as with the voice 
of many thunders. On this point, the feeling in 
the free states is unanimous, and has been for these 
forty years. The preachers of immediate abolition 
often profess, that a great battle must be fought, be- 
fore even New England will come out against sla- 
very. A battle must be fought, indeed, before New 
England will fall in with their measures, or adopt 
their style ; but it is nothing better than a libel on 



76 THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 

New England, to affirm, that there is here one parti- 
cle of sympathy witli slavery, or any feeling adverse 
to its abolition. Where, in New England, can even 
the repulsive power of immediate abolitionism drive 
New England men from their avowed abhorrence of 
slavery, in all its forms and operations 1 Nothing is 
wanting but the occasion and call, to bring out the 
public sentiment of all the north in one loud cry of 
reprobation against the practice of making merchan- 
dise of men. 

Nor will it be found impracticable to discuss this 
point at the south, or to convince even slaveholders 
of the wrong of claiming their slaves as ' property, 
in the same sense with their brood mares.'* It is 
not impracticable ; for there are hundreds of masters 
there, who are convinced already, and who act on 
the conviction, that they stand to their slaves, not 
in the relation of ownership over property, but in 
the relation of guardianship and government over 
men, intelligent, and invested by the God of nature 
with the rights of humanity, yet ignorant, depend- 
ent, and, but for the master, defenceless. By the 
power, not indeed of heat, and smoke, and fury, but 
of light and love, that conviction may be made to 
spread, till, having first pervaded the churches there 
of every denomination, it shall become the strong 
conviction of the popular mind ; and till the majesty 
of the people, speaking by distinct enactments, shall 
pronounce that the slaves are persons, having hu- 
man rights, and, as such, subject to the law, and 

* It seems incredible that such a comparison should have been made 
by an advocate of slaver}^ within a few months past, in the Legislature 
of proud Virginia. Yet such is the fact. 



THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 77 

under its protection. Then will the keystone of the 
mighty fabric of oppression have been taken away ; 
and legislation will have begun, effectually, the abo- 
lition of slavery. 

We appeal, therefore, earnestly, to all the rational 
philanthropists of the so-called Anti-Slavery party, 
to cease from the bewildering cry for an immediate 
emancipation, which, as defined by them, is either 
not immediate, or not emancipation ; and for an im- 
mediate abolition, which, as they explain it, is to 
leave slavery mitigated, indeed, but not yet abol- 
ished. We call on them to forsake all fraternity 
with those who insist on thus blinding themselves, 
and abusing the public. We call on them hence- 
forth to use language in its proper acceptation ; and 
when they mean to demand that men shall no longer 
be held and treated as merchandise^ to demand it 
only in terms that shall convey their meaning clear- 
ly to every mind. Let them go with this point to 
the General Assembly, and all the Synods of the 
Presbyterian Church, to the General Associations of 
New England, to the Conferences of Methodism, to 
every assembly and convention by which public 
sentiment, on a point of morals, can be directed, or 
through which such sentiment can find fit utterance. 
Let them persuade every ecclesiastical tribunal in 
the land, to fix it as a principle, that he who buys, 
or sells, or treats, his fellow -men as merchandise, is 
to be dealt with as a sinner. We will go with them ; 
our voice shall be lifted up as loud in the demand 
as theirs. Let them employ the press in all its forms 
of influence, till first the buying and selling, and then 
the owning and treating of men as merchandise, shall 



78 THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY. 

be infamous throughout the land. We will be their 
hearty coadjutors. It needs no long-continued ef- 
fort — it needs only wise and vigorous effort — to make 
the traffic in human beings, and the claim on which 
that traffic rests, infamous, utterly infamous, even 
among slaveholders. Make that traffic infamous ; 
waken the public conscience at the south, to decide 
upon it as it is ; and then the spirit, first of indivi- 
dual emancipation, next of general abolition, will 
come in like a resistless flood. What is that which, 
at the present time, stands more than anything else 
in the way of abolition ? It is the domestic slave- 
trade. It is the fact that slaves have a market price, 
and can be exchanged for money, at the pleasure or 
necessity of the proprietor. The market for slaves, 
in the recently settled cotton and sugar States, is the 
only cause which makes the slaves of Maryland and 
Virginia, of Kentucky and Tennessee, worth hold- 
ing as property. The value of slaves in Maryland, 
depends entirely on their value at New Orleans. 
Shut up the southern market, and the Maryland 
slaveholder is richer without his slaves tlian with 
them, so that his pecuniary interest is on the side of 
emancipation. Make him feel that he has no right 
to sell his slaves — make him see that he cannot sell 
them without infamy — and to him the market is 
shut up already ; nothing but l)enevolence can hin- 
der him from the most immediate emancipation, un- 
less the laws forbid him. 

We are confident that the appeal which we here 
make to rational abolitionists, will not be in vain. 
We entreat them in behalf of our common country, 
and in behalf of all those interests of mankind, which 



THE ABOLITIO^r OF SLAVERY, 79 

depend on the internal peace and continued pros- 
perity of this nation ; we entreat iheni in behalf of 
the slaves, the objects of their sympathy ; we entreat 
them as men of soberness and reason, as friends of 
man, as friends of Him who came to preach deliver- 
ance to the captives — we beg them not to reject this 
appeal, without a candid and serious consideration. 



PRESENT STATE 

OF 

THE SLAVERY QUESTION.* 

[quarterly christian spectator, 1S36.] 

This little book will do more for its author's repu- 
tation, with that portion of mankind Avhose favor- 
able opinion is most to be desired, than any other 
one thing- which has come from his pen. We have 
read it with almost nnmingled satisfaction. The 
chapter of '' explanations," that on the " evils of 
slavery," that on the '' means of removing slavery," 
and the short concluding chapter on the " duties of 
the free States," are the best parts of a book in 
which almost every page is very good. A fine and 
lofty moral spirit breathes through the whole. The 
only portion which betrays at all the habits of the 
Unitarian theologian, is the chapter in refutation of 
'' the argument which the Scriptures are thought to 
furnish in favor of slavery." Not that there is 
Unitarianism in that chapter ; indeed the whole 
book is orthodox in its air and spirit; and there are 
passages which, read with evangelical views, and 
construed as an evangelical reader would construe 

* Slavery. By William E. Channing. Boston : 1835. 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 81 

them, have a higher meaning, and a still greater 
cogency, than they could have had in the mind of 
their eloquent author. The seven pages in which 
the Scriptural argument is dispatched, betray the 
Unitarian only as they show that Dr. Channing is 
in the habit of reasoning from what he conceives to 
be the genius of Christianity, rather than from the 
inspired record of Avhat Christianity is. 

Dr. Channing's ground is, briefly, that so far as 
slavery divests its victims of all personal rights ; so 
far as it reduces human beings to the rank and con- 
dition of cattle; so far, in a Avord, as it converts men 
into property, it is sin, simple, unqualified sin. He 
discriminates justly between the w^rong of slavery, 
that is, the wrongfulness of those laws which make 
the negro a chattel, and refuse to recognize him in 
any other relation — and the guilt attached to the in- 
dividual, who, not seeing how to lay down the au- 
thority committed to him by those laws, exercises 
that authority, not for his own emolument, but for 
the w^elfare of his servants. Upon those masters 
who hold the slave '^ not for his own good or for the 
safety of the State, but with precisely the same 
views with which they hold a laboring horse, that 
is, for the profit they can wiring from him," he 
pours a torrent of eloquent indignation ; while he 
freely acknowledges, that all masters are not thus 
guilty. In regard to the means of removing slavery, 
he holds, that the best, safest, happiest remedy, is in 
the hands of the masters ; that the institution of new 
relations between the master and the servant, with- 
out the master's full consent, though it may be far 
better than the perpetuity of the relations now exist- 



g2 PRESENT STATE OF 

ing-j cannot but be attended with disaster ; that 
while the recognition of the slave as a man entitled 
to the benefits of good government ought to be im- 
mediate, his emancipation must be a gradual pro- 
cess ; that the slave ought to be trained for self-sup- 
port, by being taught to labor under the impulse of 
other and manlier motives than the mere terror of 
the lash, by seeing new privileges and honorable 
distinctions awarded to the honest and industrious ; 
by being made to feel, that he has a family whose 
happiness depends on his industry, integrity and 
prudence, and by being imbued with the truths and 
motives of the Gospel of Christ. We need not say 
how entirely ihese views coincide with our own. 

One chapter is devoted to abolitionism in the now 
technical meaning of that word. The author, while 
exhibiting his objections to the spirit and proceed- 
ings of the anti-slavery societies, vindicates them 
from the charge of designing to promote insurrec- 
tion among the slaves, and denounces with great 
solemnity and earnestness the parricidal attempts 
that have been made to suppress their proceedings 
"oy violence. His greatest objection seems to be 
against the system of agitation^ by which the anti- 
slavery men have sought to compass their ends. Of 
this system of agitation he says : 

* From the beginning it created alarm in the considerate, and 
strengthened the s3-mpathies of the free States with the slave- 
^ jlder. It made converts of a few individuals, but alienated 
multitudes. Its influence at the south has been evil without 
mixture. It has stirred up bitter passions and a fierce fanaticism, 
which have shut every ear and every heart against its arguments 
and persuasions. These effects are the more to be deplored, be- 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 33 

cause the hope of freedom to the slave lies chiefly in the disposi- 
tion of his master. The abolitionist proposed, indeed, to convert 
the slaveholders ; and for this end he approached them v^rith vitu- 
peration and exhausted on them the vocabulary of abuse ! And 
he has reaped as he sowed. His vehement pleadings for the 
slaves have been answered by wilder ones from the slaveholder ; 
and, what is worse, deliberate defences of slavery have been sent 
forth, in the spirit of the dark ages, and in defiance of the moral 
convictions and feelings of the Christian and civilized world. 
Thus, with good purposes, nothing seems to have been gained. 
Perhaps (though I am anxious to repel'the thought) something has 
been lost to the cause of freedom and humanity.' — pp. 141, 142. 

On this text we offer a few comments, illustrating 
the recent history and present bearings of the slavery- 
question in this country. What Dr. Channing says, 
is for the most part truly said, and well said; yet 
in some points it is far from being the whole truth. 

The system of agitation pursued by the abolition- 
ists has '^strengthened the s)^mpathies of the free 
States with the slaveholder." True; yet this in- 
creased sympathy with slaveholders, is not produced 
by the system of agitation alone. It is by their 
schemes of agitation, taken in connection with their 
doctrine of immediate freedom, and their usurpation 
and perversion of the name of abolitionist, that the 
anti-slavery societies have produced in the free States 
so considerable a reaction favorable to slavery. Dr. 
Channing finds himself compelled, by the persecu- 
tions and the mobs which have been got up against 
these societies, to take sides with a party whose doc- 
trine of immediate emancipation he renounces, whose 
system of agitation he deprecates, and whose spirit 
of denunciation he abhors. Just so, thousands of 



84 PRESENT STATE OF 

the best of men, struck with the ferocity of the de- 
nunciations indiscriminately launched against all 
slaveholders in all possible circumstances, have been 
constrained to take sides with slaveholders, and to 
say, whatever may be true of slavery, slaveholding 
is not necessarily so bad as you represent it. Those 
who have demurred at the new doctrine of immediate 
emancipation, or its corollaries — such as the exclu- 
sion of every slave-owner from all Christian commu- 
nion, have been vilified in the publications of these 
reformers, as ^^dough-faces," ^'pro-slavery advo- 
cates," " apologists for oppression and man-steal- 
ing;" and by suffering the same reproaches with 
the slaveholder from the same quarter, have been 
compelled thus far to S3anpathize with him. The 
name of abolitionist, which justly belongs, as a name 
of honor, to all those States which have provided for 
the extinction of slavery within their own territory, 
and to every citizen of those States who approves 
and honors such a policy, has been perverted and 
degraded by being claimed as the distinctive name 
of a bitter, contentious, and therefore obnoxious par- 
ty ; till many who once would have gloried in such 
a name, and who, when it shall have regained its 
legitimate meaning, will glory in it again, having 
lost their sympathy with the name, have uncon- 
sciously become less interested in the thing. Under 
such influences, it is not strange that there has been 
a temporary reaction in the public sentiment of the 
free States ; nor is it strange, that political editors 
and others at the north, presuming on the force and 
permanancy of this reaction, and having an object 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 35 

to gain, have even ventured to defend the whole 
theory and practice of slavery and the slave-trade, 
as they exist in the southern States. 

At the south, this system of agitation '^ has stirred 
up bitter passions and a fierce fanaticism, which have 
shut every ear and every heart against its arguments 
and persuasions." So says Dr. Channing, and we 
cannot deny that it is so. Yet if any suppose, that 
the furious fanaticism of southern demagogues has 
all been created by the anti-slavery societies, they 
entirely misunderstand the matter. The direct in- 
fluence of the immediate abolitionists has been far 
less at the south ; their publications have had a far 
more limited circulation there, than is implied in 
such a supposition. Besides, others who discussed 
the subject of slavery before tlie modern doctrine of 
immediate emancipation was broached, before the 
present system of agitation was dreamed of, found, 
as Dr. Channing has found since the publication of 
this book, that it is not the doctrine of immediate 
abolition only, nor the scheme of northern agitation 
only, nor a fierce denunciatory temper only, nor the 
combination of all these things only, that is odious 
at the south ; but that ever}^ discussion of slavery in 
whatever quarter, and in whatever form ; every pro- 
posal for the abolition of slavery, whatever the spirit 
in which it may be conceived, and whatever the ar- 
guments by which it may be enforced, is sure, if only 
it attracts attention at the south, to be met with a 
growl of fanatical defiance. 

As we understand the matter, the most important 
effect of the anti-slavery agitation thus far, has been 
its influence on the feelings, opinions, and party 
6 



§6 PRESENT STATE OF 

sympathies of that small portion of the southern com- 
munity Avhich was predisposed to favor the abolition 
of slavery. The great majority of active ministers of 
the gospel at the south, seeing, as they were com- 
pelled to see, the disastrous obstacles which slavery 
rears in the way of the gospel, by its influence on 
the master, on the slave, on the form and spirit of 
society ; very many of the more devoted and intelli- 
gent members of the various Christian churches, 
becoming gradually more and more associated with 
the churches of the free States in philantln'opic and 
Christian enterprises, and continually receiving reli- 
gious intelligence and religious papers and books 
from the north ; many thinking and sober men, con- 
sidering the subject in the light of politics and politi- 
cal econom}^, and imbued with the free spirit which 
breathes through all modern literature ; were not 
only ashamed of slavery, but were ready to receive 
more light on the question of its moral character, and 
to ask, how can it be abolished? — These classes gen- 
erally have been somewhat acquainted with the 
movements of the immediate abolitionists, and have 
read enough of their publications to know something 
of their doctrines, their proposals and their spirit. 
On these persons, the influence of the anti-slavery 
societies has indeed been '^ evil without mixture." 
The idea of immediate and unqualified emancipation 
they could not entertain for a moment. Moved by 
their abhorrence of a doctrine which seemed to them 
so extravagant ; by an excusable indignation at the 
denunciations hurled against them and their fellow- 
citizens ; by the fear of being thought to entertain 
some sympathy with '' the fanatics of the north ;" 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 87 

and by the natural yielding of each individual mind 
to the current of public sentiment ; they have taken 
sides with the most tborough defenders of slavery, 
and to some extent, with the most fanatical denounc- 
ers of the liberty of speech and thought. Thus it is, 
that while a spirit as malignant as ever thirsted for 
blood, has blazed over the southern States, there has 
hardly been in all the south, one whisper of protes- 
tation. Such is the triumph of the anti-slavery soci- 
eties. They have silenced, they have annihilated 
for the time, that party in the southern States which 
was opposed to slavery, at least, in theory, and 
which was inclined to promote inquiry respecting a 
safe and righteous abolition. 

But what is the cause of that excitement of '^bitter 
passions and fierce fanaticism" which is now raging 
at the south 1 We have already intimated, that the 
cause is not to be found in the operations of our anti- 
slavery friends ; and Ave know it will be put to us to 
say, Whence all this excitement'? Whence these 
outrageous proceedings'? Whence the before un- 
heard of claim, that Congress has no power to make 
laws for the protection of the ^^inalienable rights" of 
some five or six. thousand persons under its ^' ex- 
clusive jurisdiction" in the District of Columbia? 
Whence the demands, so fatal to liberty, that the 
right of petitioning Congress shall be trampled un- 
der foot, and peaceful and respectful petitioners 
treated with insult by the national legislature ; that 
the entire post-ofiice establishment shall become a 
literary inquisition ; that the free States shall make 
laws to abridge the freedom of the press, the freedom 
of the pulpit, the freedom of voluntary association ? 



gg PRESENT STATE OF 

Whence the preposterous claim, that in a country 
where no other subject is too high or sacred for dis- 
cussion ; where the atheist may assail Christianity 
with ribaldry in taverns and steamboats ; where 
agrarians may hold public meetings to discuss and 
plan the philanthropic scheme of abolishing pro- 
perty ; where a brazen-fronted woman may lecture 
in the theatres against the slavish institution of mar- 
riage ; free men in the free States shall not speak, 
nay, shall not think, on the subject of slavery 1 To 
us, the cause of all this mad excitement seems to lie 
quite on the surface of passing events. When were 
the votes of the south given to make a northern man 
President of the United States'? When was there 
any danger of their being thus given, till the can- 
vassing for the now coming election was commenced. 
We will speak more distinctly. Was it not quite 
certain, some two or three years ago, in consequence 
of the overwhelming influence and popularity of the 
present administration, that unless some desperate 
experiment should be made upon the public mind, 
many southern votes, not to say a great majority of 
the southern votes for the presidency, would be 
given to a citizen of the north ? Is it not notorious, 
that at that time a newspaper in the city of Wash- 
ington, representing and leading a certain party in 
the southern States, began in concert with associated 
presses still farther south, to address the fears, preju- 
dices and pride of the slaveholding States, on this 
very subject of northern interference with slavery? 
Was it not a manifest and leading object of the ap- 
peal then commenced, to make the question of sla- 
very entirely a political question with every southern 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 89 

man? And can there be any doubt that this was 
done — this excitement kindled, this agitation kept 
up, month after month — simply with a view to re- 
vive and aggravate that intense sectional feeling 
which heretofore has always been strong enough to 
direct the votes of southern men ? What is it that 
is going on in Congress at this very time, in relation 
to the anti-slavery memorials 1 Are not the southern 
leaders continually urging their extravagant de- 
mands with a view to compel the friends of that 
northern candidate either to take some position that 
shall ruin their candidate at the south, or to make 
some cowardly and servile concession that shall dis- 
grace him at the north 1 How are the people con- 
tinually abused by the demagogues of all parties, 
who play upon their ignorance, their prejudices, 
their basest passsions, to gain the power or the emol- 
uments of office ! 

Of all parties, we say — What more affecting illus- 
tration of the degradation of the political press can 
be demanded, than the fact that at the north, while 
partisans of the administration have attempted to 
throv/ upon their opponents the odium of an alliance 
with the anti-slavery societies, the equally unprinci- 
pled attempt has been made on the other side, and 
has been persevered in with infinite effrontery by 
journals of great authority and wide circulation, to 
fix the same odium on the friends of the administra- 
tion? 

In our judgment, then, the immediate abolition- 
ists are only to a limited extent responsible for the 
excitement in the slaveholding States. They have 
been the occasion rather than the cause or source of 



90 PRESENT STATE OF 

the mischief. Political men, having- political ends 
in view, have taken advantage of their ill-advised 
operations, to blow the unquenchable fanaticism of 
the south into a devouring flame. 

Another unfortunate result ascribed to the system 
of agitation pursued by the anti-slavery societies, is, 
that " deliberate defences of slavery have been sent 
forth in the spirit of the dark ages, and in defiance 
of the moral convictions and feelings of the civilized 
world." These defences of slavery, the atrocity of 
which surpasses even Dr. Channing's power of ex- 
pression, are to be traced, we apprehend, to several 
causes, among which the anti-slavery agitation is by 
no means the most considerable. 

No man has forgotten, that in the summer of 1831 
there was an insurrection of slaves in Southampton 
County, Virginia, in the sudden fury of which some 
sixty or seventy white people were murdered. The 
eyes of the southern people were opened for a mo- 
ment to the horrors of that condition of society in 
Avhich they live. In Virginia, particularly, it was 
felt that something must be done ; and when the 
Legislature of that great State met, in the winter fol- 
lowing, memorials were presented, praying that mea- 
sures might be taken for the abolition of slavery. 
At once it appeared, that in the Legislature of old Vir- 
ginia there was a powerful abolition party. The 
whole subject of slavery — its injustice, its impolicy, 
its perils, the practicability of its removal — all was 
discussed with open doors, in the presence of crowd- 
ed and excited auditories ; and speeches, -worthy of 
the best days of Virginian eloquence, were reported 
for the newspapers, and ^vere scattered over all the 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. Ql 

south, to be read in every family. The session closed 
without any decisive action on the subject ; yet not 
without the expectation, that in the progress of an- 
other year some plan would be matured which should 
secure the removal of slavery from that common- 
wealth which gave birth to Washington, and the soil 
of which is hallowed by the ashes of the father of 
his country. 

In tliis emergency, it became necessary that some- 
thing should be done to convince the people of Vir- 
ginia of the safety, the profitableness, the republican- 
ism, and the respectability of slavery. Not a little 
was done by speeches in the capitol, and by essays 
in the newspapers ; but the champion of slavery, 
who appeared just in time to turn the tide of public 
opinion, was one '^ Thomas R. Dew, Professor of 
History, Metaphysics and Political Law, in William 
and Mary College." This gentleman, whose name 
we trust will be duly honored by posterity, was the 
author of an article on the debate in the Virginia 
Legislature, which having been first published, with 
much curtailment, in the American Quarterly Re- 
view, was soon afterwards published entire at Rich- 
mond, forining a pamphlet of one hundred and 
thirty-three large pages. We have read the pam- 
phlet diligently, and with no little admiration. The 
learned professor of history, metaphysics and political 
law, '^ boldly grapples with the abolitionists on the 
great question." He argues, that the practice of 
enslaving captives taken in war is the first step which 
marks the departure of mankind from primeval bar- 
barism ; and that inasmuch as it is perfectly just for 
two nations or tribes, in a state of mutual hostility, 



92 PRESENT STATE OF 

to kill each other to the greatest possible extent, the 
men, women and chilrlren who, instead of being- mur- 
dered outright, arc reduced to perpetual and absolute 
slavery, have nothing to complain of, but everything 
to be thankful for. He argues further, that where 
all the property is in the hands of a particular class, 
or where the government through w^eakness or inef- 
ficiency fails to afford protection, there the holders 
of property will be the masters, and the others will 
necessarily, and therefore of course righteously, be 
held as slaves. Not stopping even here, he urges 
the argument, that in many barbarous or over- 
crowded countries people are reduced to such ex- 
tremity of suffering, that they will consent to be 
slaves for the sake of having a slave's food and rai- 
ment, and, in some savage tribes, '' a father will sell 
his son for a knife or a hatchet." And lest any 
doubt should remain in respect to the perfect equity 
of absolute and hereditary slavery, such as exists in 
Virginia, the striking and conclusive position is taken 
that '' all governments, even those of the States of 
our confederacy, have ever been considered as per- 
fectly justifiable in enslaving for crime." All this 
he considers as proving that " slavery is the neces- 
sary result of the laws of mind and matter ;" and 
hence he infers, '' that it was intended by our Cre- 
ator for some useful purpose." Proceeding to set 
forth the advantages which have resulted to the world 
from slavery, he insists that this benignant institution, 
which by some unaccountable fatality is everywhere 
spoken against, ''has been perhaps the principal 
means for impelling forward the civilization of man- 
kind." In particular, he shows by the conjoined 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 93 

light of history, metaphysics and political economy, 
that it diminishes the frequency and the honors of 
war; that it makes the migratory man domestic, 
and the indolent man industrious, and should have 
been seasonably applied to save the Pequots, the 
Mohawks and the Cherokees from extinction ; and 
that it raises woman (listen, ye fanatics, and be 
forever silent) from the condition of a mere beast of 
burden to her proper station, and endows her with 
graces and accomplishments. The African slave- 
trade next comes under consideration ; and here the 
ingenious author seems to think, with Sir Roger De 
Coverly, that ^'much may be said on both sides;" 
though, as the revival of that trade, under the sanc- 
tion of the laws, would seriously interfere with the 
profits of the Virginia slave-breeders, he is on the 
whole not disposed to reverse the judgment which 
the conscience of the civilized world has pronounced 
upon this traffic. Next he undertakes to expose the 
futility of all possible plans for the abolition of 
slavery. Through this part of his book, which is 
by far the most considerable in extent and in ability, 
we have no time to trace the progress of his argu- 
ment. One or two points, however, in that argument, 
must be mentioned, to illustrate the cold-bloodedness 
with which the subject is treated. He shows that in 
Virginia the slaves are worth in market one hundred 
millions of dollars ; and he infers that this property, 
being nearly one-third of all the property existing in 
that great State, would be annihilated by any scheme 
of abolition, leaving Virginia a desert. He shows 
that negro slaves are the great staple of Virginia, 
inasmuch as «' upwards of six thousand are yearly 
5* 



94 PRESENT STATE OF 

exported to other States," so that the chivah-oiis 
commonwealth of Virginia receives from the sale of 
human beings, born under its own motto of sic sem- 
per tyrannis, not less than $1,200,000 every j^ear. 
In the professor's own words: ''Virginia is in fact 
a negro-raising State for other States. She produces 
enough for her own supply, and six thousand for 
sale." He shows, furthermore, that so long as the 
planters of tlie more southern States can buy negroes 
from abroad at a cheaper rate than the cost of raising 
them at home, so long comparatively few slaves will 
be raised on those plantations ; and so long the slave- 
holders in Virginia will be able to realize their mill- 
ions by the exportation of negroes. " The slaves in 
Virginia," he says, "multiply more rapidly than in 
most of the southern States ; the Virginians can raise 
cheaper than thc)^ can buy ; in fact, it is one of their 
greatest sources of profit." He brings his work to a 
conclusion, by considering distinctly the alleged in- 
justice and evils of slavery : and in refutation of the 
vulgar errors on this subject, he maintains that slavery 
is not wrong in the abstract; that its moral effects 
are not pernicious, but, on the contrary, the more 
absolute the slavery the more magnanimous will be 
the master, and tlie more contented and happy will 
be the slave ; that slavery is a powerful promoter of 
the spirit of liberty ; that there is no danger from 
plots and insurrections, but the more nimierous and 
compact the population the greater the safety ; and 
finally, that the notorious and lamented decay of old 
Virginia is owing not to slavery, but to " the exac- 
tions of the federal government." 
;^ This pamphlet — to the ability of which our rapid 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 95 

sketch has by no means done justice, for arguments 
in support of slavery must needs suffer by being con- 
densed — produced a powerful impression upon the 
State of Virginia. Nor can it be considered strange 
that such was the fact. Professor Dew himself re- 
membered, and inadveitently quoted, as a great 
truth, the saying of Hobbes, '' that men might easily 
be brought to deny that things equal to the same 
thing are equal to each other, if their fancied inter- 
ests were opposed in any way to the admission of 
this axiom.'' It Avas easy then to make tlie people 
of Virginia believe, that while their slaves were worth 
one hundred millions of dollars, and while the ex- 
portation of a part of the annual increase was bring- 
ing into the State one million two hundred thousand 
dollars yearly, slavery could not be so bad a thing 
as it had seemed, under the excitement which fol- 
lowed the Southampton massacre. Accordingly, 
when the Legislature came together again, and a 
whole year had passed without another insurrection, 
there seemed to be no occasion for any farther dis- 
cussion, and Professor Dew's book was thenceforth 
considered to be perfectly unanswerable. 

Since that time defences of slavery have been 
multiplied at the south. Formerly, southern men 
v/ere generally in the habit of acknowledging that 
slavery is in some sense an evil, and excused it b}^ 
pleading the difficulties in the way of abolition. But 
now they as generally take the ground that the state 
of society in which the working-class are held as 
slaves is the very heau ideal of a well-regulated com- 
munity ; that this institution is the nurse of patriot- 
ism, of refinement, of all heroic and generous senti- 



96 PRESENT STATE OF 

ments ; an excellent, promoter of good morals, of 
public tranquillity and domestic happiness ; and that 
all the religion which does not teach that God made 
negroes on purpose to be slaves, is sheer fanaticism. 
All the unqualified and shameless defences of slavery 
that have been uttered at the south since 1832, seem to 
us to have been derived directly or indirectly from the 
great repository of doctrines and arguments found in 
Professor Dew's '^ Review of the Debate in the Vir- 
ginia Legislature.'' And that which first put the 
southern orators and essay writers upon this barba- 
rian defence of one of the most barbarous institutions 
on earth, was not the anti-slavery agitation at the 
north, but rather that agitation so much nearer the 
seat of the evil, which ensued upon the Southampton 
massacre, and which, for one whole winter, thun- 
dered in the capitol at Richmond. 

Undoubtedly this now prevalent practice of de- 
fending slavery in the abstract, has been promoted, 
as Dr. Chaaning intimates, by the measures of the 
anti-slavery societies. Yet it is not to be imagined 
that such arguments are designed exclusively or 
chiefly for northern readers. The design is to ope- 
rate upon the southern public, to put down entirely 
those ideas of the insecurity, the impolicy, and the 
injustice of slavery, which so lately threatened the 
oldest and greatest of the slave States with abolition, 
and to aid in those political agitations to which we 
have already referred. 

'^ Perhaps something has been lost to the cause of 
freedom and humanity." Certainly the good cause 
has lost ground within the last four years. Yet we 
enjoy the consolation of believing, that the evils 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 97 

which Dr. Channing deplores, and which are indeed 
to be lamented as great evils, will be only temporary, 
and under the benignant providence of Him who can 
make the wrath of man to praise him, will be, in 
the end, productive of good. It is not to be expected 
that public sentiment, in respect to a subject so in- 
volved with innumerable interests, and entangled 
with all the complications of prejudice and passion, 
can be reformed in the southern States, without con- 
tinued conflicts, and the liability to frequent reaction. 
Such a reaction we are just now witnessing. But 
that reaction will react again. Every high-wrought 
excitement, especially every excitement got up by 
extra agitation, is essentially transitory. And Avhen 
the hour of this present excitement in the south shall 
have passed, there will be found men at the south, 
who will dare to think for themselves, and who, not 
having the fear of Lynch-law before their eyes, will 
dare to say, that an arrangement which puts one- 
half of the population of a State under the most ab- 
solute despotism, leaving them without any legal 
protection for one of the rights of their human na- 
ture, and which does all that can be done to hinder 
them from outgrowing their original barbarism, or 
becoming in any manner capable of freedom, is nei- 
ther safe, nor politic, nor just. In other words, dis- 
cussion, debate, free inquiry on the subject of slavery, 
now suppressed everywhere beyond the Potomac, 
will break out again. None can tell how near the 
occasion is, that shall put a new aspect upon all 
these discussions. Another massacre like that of 
Southampton might not do it. The burning of a city 
might not do it. But a reduction of the prices of 



98 PRESENT STATE OF 

cotton and sugar some twenty-five per cent., for two 
successive seasons, would operate resistlessly to en- 
lighten public sentiment in all the slaveholding 
States ; and at v/hatever time such an event may 
take place, the men will be found who, in the name 
of the commonvrealth, and in the names of human- 
ity and justice, will demand that something be done 
for the removal of slavery. Nay, without any such 
occasion, it must ere long appear, that the extreme 
doctrines and measures now urged in support of .^la- 
very, are not received unanimously, even at the 
south. 

What then is in brief, the present state of the sla- 
very question? It is just this. The anti-slavery 
societies, by their doctrine of immediate and unqual- 
ified abolition, and by the peculiar measures which 
they have adopted for the propagation of that doc- 
trine, have divided the north and united the south. 
The southern agitators, by their doctrine of the su- 
perlative excellence and inviolable sacredness of sla- 
very, and by their audacious demands in Congress 
and elsewhere, are rapidly making the north unani- 
mous, and will ere long produce a division at the 
south. Then, when the voice of the north shall be 
again distinct, manly, true to its principles ; and 
when some southern men shall again dare to main- 
tain, that slavery is not the perfection of civilization 
— it will be found, that the cause of truth, of freedom, 
of happiness, while suflfering temporary disaster, has 
been imperceptibly approaching the hour of final 
triumph. 

Dr. Channing's book is well suited to do good just 
at this juncture. At the north, its eloquent appeals 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 99 

will find a response in the mind of every man who 
does not himself deserve to be a slave. The super- 
ficial, sneering-, infidel reply, which some anony- 
mous author has published in Boston,* so far as it 
has any effect on the public mind, must operate to 
secure for the work before us a wider circulation, a 
more attentive reading, and therefore a more decided 
and salutary influence. At the south, its circulation 
must of course be limited ; but there, hundreds of 
leading men who would scorn to look upon a tract, 
or a volume gratuitously circulated, are constrained 
to buy it and to read it ; and however they may rage 
against it or attempt to answer it, the time must 
come, when the seed thus sown upon the axgry 
waters will have found a soil in which to vegetate. 
The criticisms pronounced upon it by southern sen- 
ators in Congress, will only go to promote that dis- 
cussion of slavery which neither speeches, nor reso- 
lutions, nor laws, nor lawless violence, will be able 
to suppress. Such speeches as that of the senator 
from Virginia! are, if we may resume t]ie figure we 
have just been using, the wind which will help to 
carry the scattered and floating seed to the spot 
where, taking root, it will put forth first the blade, 
then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. 

At the hazard of seeming somewhat more discur- 
sive than we are wont to be, we take leave to notice 
one or two points in the speech of Mr. Leigh review- 
ing Dr. Channing's book. The manliness and the 

* Remarks on Dr. Channing's Slavery. By a citizen of Massachu- 
setts. Boston, 1835. 

t Mr. Leigh's speech on abolition of slavery in the District of Colum- 
bia. New-York Observer, Feb. 13, 1836. 



100 PRESENT STATE OF 

gentlemanliness of that speech, entitle it to a degree 
of consideration which is not due to the vulgar and 
theatrical chivalry which many southern orators ut- 
ter so profusely on such subjects. What then is the 
present state of the slavery question, as it appears in 
the honorable senator's critique on Dr. Channing 1 

First, if we do not altogether misunderstand the 
scope of Mr. Leigh's remarks, it is demanded, that 
the discussion of slavery and the publication of opin- 
ions concerning it shall be put down at the north, 
either by legislative enactments or by popular vio- 
lence ; and the question is, whether this demand 
shall be complied with. The senator's first and pro- 
foundest grief in regard to Dr. Channing's book is, 
that it is the Doctor's " purpose to counteract the 
efforts of those who are endeavoring to put down the 
schemes of the abolitionists, by embodying public 
opinion into efficient action against them." Em- 
bodying 'public opinion into efficient action ! If any 
man is at a loss to decide what that means, let him 
look over a file of the New York Courier and Enqui- 
rer, or of the New York Evening Star, or of some 
of the agitating journals of those States in which the 
Lynch-court takes cognizance of all abuses of the 
freedom of speech. 

Secondly, the doctrine is now laid down, that it 
is incendiary to declare that a man cannot rightfully 
be used as property. Dr. Channing uses this lan- 
guage : ^' We have thus seen, that a human being 
cannot rightfully be held and used as property. No 
legislation, not that of all countries or worlds could 
make him so. Let this be laid down as a first fun- 
damental truth. Let us hold it fast, as a most sacred. 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. IQl 

precious truth. Let us hold it fast, against all cus- 
toms, all laws, all rank, wealth, and power. Let it 
be armed with the whole authority of the civilized 
and Christian world." " Now," says the senator 
from Virginia in reply, '' If Dr. Channing does not 
know, that such language as this is in its nature and 
tendency incendiary, 1 insist that he ought not to 
write upon any subject he so little understands." 
We say then, the question is, whether this doctrine 
shall be received as political and moral orthodoxy at 
the north. The question is not, whether the publish- 
er of an incendiary book ought to be punished ; it 
is, what makes the book incendiary? — it is, whether 
the author, the printer, and the publisher, who were 
concerned in getting up a paper or book which con- 
tains the opinion, that man, made in God's image, 
cannot rightfully be held and used as property, are 
incendiaries. Let every citizen of the free States 
make up his mind upon this question. Free States, 
did we say ? Nay, if this doctrine is to be admitted 
and established, Turkey is freer than New England. 
Thirdly, it is a question between Dr. Channing 
and Mr. Leigh, whether slavery tends to licentious- 
ness. 

On this point, Dr. Channing has expressed him- 
self eloquently and with great power. His language, 
which, in a single word, is perhaps a shade stronger 
than was necessary, need not be quoted here. Mr. 
Leigh says in reply, '' I shall content myself with 
declaring my conscientious belief, that there is no 
society existing on the globe, in which the virtue of 
conjugal fidelity, in man as well as woman, and the 
happiness of domestic life, are more general than in 



lOa PRESENT STATE OF 

the slaveholding States.'' We cannot doubt that 
Mr. Leigh believes as he says. Yet we cannot for- 
get, that in those States the pnrity of a million of fe- 
males is at the mercy of masters and of masters' 
sons, living imder a fervid clime, in idleness and 
fullness of bread. We cannot forget, that among 
more than two millions of people in those States 
there is no such thing as legal marriage ; that among 
those two millions, the connections which they form 
under the name of marriage, are always liable to be 
dissolved, not only at the will of the parties, but 
against their will, whenever the interest of a mas- 
ter or of a master's creditors may require a separa- 
tion ; and that, therefore, among two millions of 
people there, the connection of husband and w^ife — 
no, of male and female — can have nothing of the 
sacredness that belongs to the relation of husband 
and wife in a civilized and Christian community. 
We cannot forget, that in those States females of 
every variety of complexion, from the glossy ebony 
to that slightest tinge of yellow through which the 
quick blood speaks as eloquently, perhaps, as on the 
cheek of the most delicate mistress, are liable to be 
set up on a table in the most public places, exposed 
like any other merchandise to the examination of 
every idler passer by, and sold to the highest bidder; 
and that the moment the purchaser has laid his hand 
upon his bargain, she is as completely at his disposal 
as if she had been sold in the slave-market of Tripoli, 
to adorn the harem of a Turk. Some may find it 
easy to believe, tliat every young master at the 
south is a very Scipio ; but we must forget what the 
laws are in those States, and what human nature is 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 103 

everywhere, before we can go as far as the senator 
from Virginia goes, in his vindication of the chastity 
of the southern slaves. The question, however, 
whether there is an actual connection between sla- 
very and licentiousness, is a question more interest- 
ing and more important at the south than at the 
north. Let every southern man look around him 
and see what the facts are. Let every southern mo- 
ther of a son ask herself, whether she believes that 
all mothers in the free States have just such anxie- 
ties as she has. 

Dr. Channing touches on another part of this sub- 
ject. He adverts to the fact, that many masters 
have children born into slavery. Most of these child- 
ren, he presumes, are kindly treated during the 
life-time of the fathers ; but, as the fathers die, not 
a few, especially since the obstacles in the way of 
emancipation have been increased, are left to the 
chances of slavery. '' Still more, it is to be feared, 
that there are cases in which the master puts his 
own children under the whip of the overseer, or else 
sells them to undergo the miseries of bondage among 
strangers." '' Among the pollutions of heatlienism, 
I know nothing worse than this. The heatlien who 
feasts on his country's foe, may hold up his head by the 
side of the Christian who sells his child for gain — 
sells him to be a slave. God forbid that I should 
charge this crime on a people. But however rarely 
it may occur, it is a fruit of slavery, an exercise of 
power belonging to slavery, and no laws restrain or 
punish it." To this the eloquent senator replies — 
how ? — by admitting all that Dr. Channing has said. 
'^ I shall not deny that such facts as he mentions 



104 PRESENT STATE OF 

may have occurred. But," he proceeds, '^ is it rea- 
sonable, is it cliaritable, to allege such iniquities as 
a reproach against our national character 1" Cer- 
tainly, Mr. Senator, so long as your laws tolerate and 
uphold such villany, so long your proud escutcheon 
bears the stain in the face of all the world. When 
your legislatures shall doom to the gallows or to the 
penitentiary the man who sells his children, then 
will that stain be wiped away. Mr Leigh proceeds 
to say, that within a year he has seen several ac- 
counts of parents exposing their new-born infants in 
the streets of the city of New York ; and he asks, 
" Is there any man in his sound senses, that would 
deduce from such facts matter of reproach against 
the people of that city ?" We answer, perhaps not. 
But why is it so ? Why are not the people there 
responsible ? Simply because such exposures there 
are held as crimes, not merely in the eye of con- 
science, but in the eye of law. The senator having 
thrown up this little cloud of dust, makes good his 
retreat from the point, by saying, " I believe that 
the judicial records of this country will show that the 
number of crimes, especially those of deepest atrocity, 
committed in the non-slaveholding States, is much 
greater than those committed in the slaveholding 
States." Pray, Mr. Leigh, do the slaves in your 
part of the country ever steal? do they commit 
adultery? are they ever found guilty of assault and 
battery upon each other? and is there any '^judicial 
record" showing how often slaves are convicted of 
such crimes? Nay, if a slave should perpetrate a 
rape upon the body of a slave, would there be any 
'^ judicial record" of the crime? If two gentlemen 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 105 

have a brawl at a tavern, or a rencontre in the streets, 
and fight it out fairly and handsomely, with fists, 
with dirks, or with pistols, is there always some 
'^judicial record" of the transaction? In general, 
does not the very existence of slavery, by making 
the master, in numberless instances, judge, jury, 
and executioner, and by keeping up among the 
lords of the soil a very peculiar sort of public senti- 
ment, tend to diminish the number of ''judicial re- 
cords," rather than the number of crimes actually 
committed 7 

" Can the slaveholder use the word amalgama- 
tion without a blush ?" To this question Mr. Leigh 
replies, " It is absolutely wonderful how little amal- 
gamation has taken place in the course of two centu- 
ries." Wonderful it is to us, considering all the 
circumstances of the case ; and yet we think, that if 
any man shall venture upon reading Dr. Channing's 
pungent question in the senate, Avhen Col. Johnson 
shall have attained to the presidency of that body, 
there will be some expectation of a blush in certain 
quarters. But what is the great shame charged up- 
on Col. Johnson by his political opponents at the 
south'? Is it simply that he has a family of colored 
children? Or is it rather, that instead of treating 
his daughters as if they were cattle, he treats them 
with something of a father's affection, and even at- 
tempts to force them upon society, by taking them 
with him to places of public resort, and by mar- 
rying them to white men ? We might name the 
governor of one of the proudest States of the Union, 
who permitted his daughter to be sold and trans- 
ported from her native city to the painful and hope- 



106 rilESENT STATE OF THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 

less servitude of a plantation in Louisiana, when lie 
might easily have saved her, and it was proposed to 
him to save her. Yet so little ignominy attaches to 
him on that account, that we presume not one in 
ten thousand of those who admire his greatness, can 
guess the name of the statesman and patriot who 
permitted his daughter to be sold into exile and 
slavery, when one w^ord of his lips would have saved 
her. The African prince w'ho should do the self- 
same thing on the banks of the Congo, would for- 
feit his character : 

' But Brutus is an honorable man, 
So are they all, all honorable men.' 



SLAVERY IN MARYLAND.* 



[quarterly CHRISTIAISr SPECTATOR, 1836.] 



The author of this book was formerly, for several 
years, Professor of Languages in the University of 
North Carolina. Of course he has some qualifica- 
tions for writing on slavery, which do not belong to 
every man who undertakes to treat on that subject. 
This book, however, contains the results, not so 
much of his former acquaintance with slavery, as of 
a tour performed by him last summer, with a view 
to inquiries, in Maryland, Virginia and the District 
of Columbia. It seems to have been written with 
unusual candor. The author does not appear to 
have commenced his inquiries with a predetermi- 
nation as to the conclusions at which he should ar- 
rive. We do not remember to have read anything 
of the kind which seemed so entirely worthy of un- 
qualified confidence. 

The observations and inquiries which Mr. An- 
drews had the opportunity of making, in a tour of 
three weeks, were necessarily limited ; and any de- 
ductions from them are, of course, liable to be modi- 

* Slavery and the Do:\iestic Slave Trade in the United States. 
In a series of letters addressed to the Executive Committee of the Ame- 
rican Union for the relief and improvement of the colored race. By 
Prof. E. A. Andrews. Boston, 183G. 



108 SLAVERY IN MARYLAND. 

fied by the results of more extended investigation. 
Yet there are some things in slavery, and in the 
condition of the colored population, which appear 
to a discerning observer at the first sight; and from 
which conclusions may be drawn which no subse- 
quent investigation can set aside. 

What is southern slavery in theory 1 This ques- 
tion can be answered, without going to the south at 
all. It can be accurately or fairly answered, only 
out of the statute-books of the States in which sla- 
very exists. What is southern slavery in actual ope- 
ration 1 — is quite another question. Putting our 
knowledge of the theory of slavery side by side with 
our knowledge of human nature, we may infer what 
this system will be in its actual operation. But this 
is only inference ; and though no man who knows 
anything of human nature, can fail to acquire in 
this way some correct knowledge of the w^orking of 
the system — every rational inquiver must feel that 
there may be — in the state of society, in the vital 
energy of the Christianity diffused, more or less ex- 
tensively, through the community, in the power of 
public opinion uttered from all parts of the world ; 
nay, even in the working of enlightened selfishness 
— counteracting and modifying influences not easily 
estimated. He must feel, too, that there may be, in 
the burning sun and enervating air of an almost Ori- 
ental climate, and in the excitement of commercial 
speculation, influences that even aggravate the na- 
tural operation of a system which, in theory, shocks 
all his sensibilities. The rational inquirer, then, 
cannot but presume, that the actual working of the 
system of slavery can only be c^xupletel^ ^nd truly 



SLAVERY IN MARYLAND. IQ9 

known by actual obsei-vation, or by the testimony 
of candid and faithful observers. 

But what is the testimony of observers in respect 
to the operation of the system of slavery ? One man, 
having traveled over the south, comes home with an 
account of the comforts of the slave, his contentment, 
the lightness of his tasks, his secure provision against 
the time of sickness or old age, his thoughtless merri- 
ment, and the contrast between his condition and that 
of the laz}^, improvident, drunken, ungoverned and 
unprotected free black; and this is his picture of sla- 
very. This, we need not say, is the very picture 
uniformly drawn by slaveholders. Another man 
will go over the same ground, and will see nothing 
but horrors, or at least will report nothing but hor- 
rors. Tlie slave bleeding under the scourge, or 
fainting and dying under his burdens ; the master 
indulging all the vices of the pirate ; children torn 
from parents, and husbands from wives ; these are 
the figures which fill up his representation. What 
shall we believe? Shall we receive all that is said 
by the one, and reject all that is said by the other? 
Certainly neither of these witnesses reports the whole 
truth ; though probably each of them reports the 
whole impression produced on his mind by what he 
has seen. The observer who represents both sides 
of the subject, is the one whose story has in itself 
the strongest indications of complete trust-worthi- 
ness. There are slaves whose lot is simple wretch- 
edness, without mixture, without alleviation, with- 
out hope. On the other hand, there are slaves well 
fed, well clothed, carefully protected and provided 
for, kindly and judiciously governed, whose yoke of 
6 



110 SLAVERY IN :MARYLAND. 

bondage is so light that it is hardly felt to be a yoke. 
To describe the lot of eitlier of these classes ever so 
vividly, is not to give a full or fair account of sla- 
very as it is in actual operation. The truth lies be- 
tween these conflicting statements ; or rather, the 
truth includes them both, and includes a great deal 
more. He whose interests or prejudices prevent him 
from seeing in slavery anything much to be regret- 
ted, and he whose feelings or predeterminations 
prevent him from reporting any alleviating circum- 
stances, may both be valuable witnesses ; for each 
may report facts of great importance, which the 
other entirely omits. Such a reporter, however, as 
the author of this book, is better than both of them. 
While he represents without fear or favor, and with 
natural sentiments of indignation, the atrocities 
which slavery produces, and which are the natural 
operation of the system, he has no passions and no 
perverted habits of mind, which prevent him from 
seeing or admitting into his statement the facts on 
which the slaveholder relies for the defence of the 
system. The following statement is one which 
seems to us important to a right apprehension of the 
subject : 

' Among others into whose society I was accidentally thrown, 
were two families from the extreme south, who were returning 
slowly homeward from their summer's tour to the northern States, 
and stopping so long in the principal cities through which they 
passed, and at the various watering-places which they visited, as 
to reach Louisiana after the first frosts of autumn should have 
rendered their return safe. The gentlemen might have been 
twenty-five or thirty years old ; the ladies were a few years 
younger. The latter had each the charge of an interesting child 
two or three years old, the special care of which was committed 



SLAVEllY IN MARYLAND. m 

to two colored nurses, who were their only attendants. It was 
not easy to determine which of the group were happiest ; the se- 
date, intelligent, and dignified fathers, the accomplished mothers, 
the playful children, or their young, well-fed, and well-dressed 
nurses. 

The situation in which domestic slaves are often placed, in 
prosperous moral and intelligent families, is one of far more un- 
mingled happiness than is usually imagined by those who have 
never witnessed it. The mistake into which many fall, upon 
this subject, arises principally from their failing to estimate prop- 
erly the amount of happiness occasioned by the mutual affection 
between the white and the colored members of the same family. 
This attachment is of course a more available source of happiness 
in virtuous families, than in those of an opposite character ; but, 
like parental and filial affection, it is rarely entirely wanting, even 
in the most hardened and profligate. This relation is in reality 
more like that of parent and child, than like any other with which 
it can be compared, and is altogether stronger than that which 
binds together the northern employer and his hired domestic. 
The slave looks to his master and mistress for direction in every- 
thing, and insensibly acquires for them a respect mingled with 
afiection, of which those never dream who think of slavery only 
as a system of whips and fetters — of unfeeling tyranny, on the 
one part, and of fear mingled with hatred, on the other. The 
latter is the usual picture of slavery which is presented to the 
people of the north, and it is no wonder that southern masters, 
who know how wide from truth this representation is, are not 
particularly ready to listen to the counsel of those, whom they 
perceive to be so ill-informed upon the subject. Wanton cruelty 
may be too often practiced by masters, as it is by many parents ; 
but this, which is but an occasional incident of slavery, should 
not be exhibited as the prominent evil. This may be removed 
by the influence of humane feelings, and especially by Christian 
principle ; but countless evils will still remain, inherent and in- 
separable from the system.' — pp. 33-35. 

Another aspect of slavery is exhibited in the follow- 
ing passage. It is in vain to tell a human being, 



112 SLAVERY IN MARYLAND. 

with a human heart, that slavery, however disguised, 
is not " a bitter draught." 

* It is sometimes said, that liberty is not greatly prized by tlie 
slaves, or even by the free blacks themselves. I have seen the 
attempt made to convince the slave that liberty would not place 
him in more eligible circumstances. He would sometimes yield 
to the arguments, but there was always something in his man- 
ner which showed that, even if the reason was confounded, the 
heart did not yield its assent. Although the condition of the 
free blacks in the southern States is proverbially wretched, and 
most of them are sufficiently apprized of its inconveniences and 
miseries by their own bitter experience, yet none of them mani- 
fest an inclination to return to slavery. Fully acquainted with 
both conditions, they submit to the inconveniences of freedom, 
not indeed contentedly, but with no design of improving their 
circumstances by sacrificing their liberty. While residing at the 
south, I knew an intelligent free mulatto, whose name was Sam. 
I do not remember in what manner he obtained his freedom, but 
he richly deserved it by his uniformly good behavior. A friend 
of mine who took a deep interest in his welfare, often conversed 
kindly with him concerning his prospects, and endeavored to 
suggest plans for his benefit. He was struck with the unfortu- 
nate circumstances in which the free blacks were placed, and 
once endeavored to convince Sam that his condition had not been 
improved by obtaining his liberty. Sam listened to his repre- 
sentations in respectful silence, conscious of his own inability to 
maintain the cause of freedom by an array of argument. When 
my friend had concluded his appeal, Sam's only answer was, 
" After all, it's a heap better to be free." Brief, however, 
as the answer was, it spoke the feelings of the whole human 
race, whether bond or free. If liberty could ever be accounted 
worthless, it would be such a liberty as falls to the lot of the 
free negro, when surrounded by slaves and their masters. Yet, 
with no better prospects than these, he was able to decide, with 
a clearness of apprehension that nothing could confuse or mislead, 
that freedom was still invaluable. While this principle remains 
in full operation in the heart, it is in vain that the slave is con- 
vinced that his external circumstances would not be improved by 



SLAVERY IN MARYLAND. n^ 

obtaining his freedom : though satisfied that by remaining a slave 
he shall be better fed, and clothed, and sheltered, and nursed 
when sick or old, he still feels that the power to choose for him- 
self and to direct his own actions, is more than an equivalent for 
all these advantages, and his heart replies, " After all, it's a heap 
better to be free." '—pp. 107-109. 

!- What is slavery in the city of Washington ? — the 
slavery which is too sacred to be touched by the ex- 
clusive jurisdiction of Congress? The facts de- 
scribed below occurred last summer. Our author's 
informant was '^ a gentleman well known in this 
country for his literary and scientific attainments." 

« A negro, about twenty- five years old, who is married, and 
has three or four children, has just applied to my informant, 
stating that he is to be sold immediately to a slave-dealer, and 
separated forever from his family, unless he can find some resi- 
dent in the District who will consent to purchase him. He is a 
member of a church in this city, and has uniformly sustained a 
Christian character. His master wishes to raise a few hundred 
dollars, which he has not the means of doing conveniently, with- 
out the sale of one of his slaves. Now it happens that the pur- 
pose for which this money is to be raised is well known, and 
is no other than to purchase a mulatto wotnan, with whom he is 
known to be criminally connected. As if even this were not a 
sufficient provocation to the moral sense of the community, there 
is an aggravation arising from the motive which determined the 
master to sell the slave of whom I am speaking, rather than any 
other. He had endeavored to employ this slave in bringing other 
colored women into the same relation to him, as the mulatto 
woman whom I have mentioned, but here the servant felt that 
he had a Master in heaven, whom he was bound to obey, rather 
than his earthly master. His refusal had greatly irritated his 

master, and led to his being selected for sale.' — pp. Ill, 112. 
******** 

One of the most interesting topics in the whole 

field of inquiry respecting slavery and abolition, is 

the progress of Maryland toward becoming a free 



114 SLAVERY IN MARYLAND. 

State. Some facts in relation to this subject have 
been collected by Mr. Andrews, which are well 
worthy to be considered by all who would under- 
stand what prospect there is of the abolition of slave- 
ry. It is only to be regretted that these facts, in- 
stead of being scattered here and there through a 
series of somewhat familiar letters, were not arranged 
and combined in such forms as to show more dis- 
tinctly the great principles which they involve. 
Perhaps, however, the book might in that w^ay 
have lost in popular interest more than it Avould 
have gained in philosophical precision. 

'' In this State," says our autlior, '^ slave-labor em- 
ployed in agriculture has long since ceased^ with few 
exceptions^ to he valuable.^^ This everybody knows 
already ; and everybody knows the reason of it. 
Slave-labor, in Maryland, comes into competition 
with free-labor, and is therefore unprofitable. And 
when the political economists of the south have 
*' exhausted the argument" for the superior profit- 
ableness of slave^abor in agriculture, it is answer 
enough to point to the agriculture of Maryland, and 
to demand of them an instance in which free labor 
has become unprofitable when placed in competition, 
on equal terms, with the labor of slaves. Slave- 
labor then must cease to be profitable everywhere, 
just in proportion as the labor of freemen can be 
employed in the production of the same commodities. 
Let the time come when the labor of intelligent 
freemen shall produce cotton, rice, and sugar, on a 
larofe scale, and slave-labor will cease to be more 
profitable in the agriculture of Louisiana and Missis- 
sippi, than it is in the agriculture of Maryland. 



SLAVERY IN MAR'iLAND. XI5 

In consequence of the unprofitableness of slave- 
labor, there is an increasing desire among the citizens of 
Maryland to he rid of slavery. The transportation of 
slaves by thousands to the southern States, does not in- 
deed indicate such a desire. But other things men- 
tioned by our author, do indicate the desire in Mary- 
land to become a free State. No serious legal difficul- 
ties are thrown in the way of emancipation. The 
testimony of one respectable witness, that he is well 
acquainted with the party, and that he knows him to 
bear a fair character for honesty and temperance, is 
regarded by the courts as sufficient to secure for the 
emancipated slave the privilege of a continued resi- 
dence within the State. Emancipations are frequent, 
and are increasingly popular. It is stated that not fewer 
than fifteen hundred slaves had been manumitted 
within the three and a half years preceding the date 
of our author's inquiries ; and that the majorit}^ of 
these were manumitted without reference to their 
emigration. Can it be doubted, that if at any time 
slave-labor should become equally unprofitable in 
the more southern States, there w^ill be in those more 
southern States the same disposition to be rid of 
slavery which nov/ exists in Maryland ? 

Slavery in Maryland is actually on the wane. The 
number of slaves has been, for a quarter of a cen- 
tury, continually diminishing. At the first census, 
viz., in 1790, the number was 103,036. At the end 
of ten years the increase had been 2.52 per cent. 
During another ten years the increase was 5.55 per 
cent. ; so that in 1810 the number of slaves was 111, 
502, or 8,466 more than in 1790. From 1810 to 
1820, the decrease was 3.68 per cent. ; and from 



116 SLAVERY IN MARYLAND. 

1820 to 1830, il was 4.1 per cent. ; so that in 1830 
the slave population of that State was less than it 
was in 1810 by 8,508. The white population in the 
meanwhile has increased in a constantly increasing 
ratio — for the first ten years, 3.68 per cent. ; for the 
second, 8.68; for the third, 10.67; for the fourth, 
11.87. The time is not far distant, then, when 
Maryland w^ill be numbered with the free States. 
Must not other States in their turn yield to the same 
influences, and become free? 

The diminutio7i of the slave population in Mary- 
land^ has been accompanied with a great increase of 
the free colored population. In 1790 the number of 
free colored persons in Maryland was only 8,043. 
In 1830 the number was 52,938, making an in- 
crease of 558 per cent, in forty years. From 1820 
to 1830, the increase was 33.24 per cent., just about 
three times as great as the increase of the white 
population for the same period. It is to be noticed, 
however, that since the prohibition of the foreign 
slave-trade, the increase of the entire colored popu- 
lation, bond and free, has not been rapid. In the 
ten years, from 1800 to 1810, the increase Avas 16.13 
per cent. But from 1810 to 1820, it was only 1.17 
per cent. From 1820 to 1830, it was 5.98 per cent. 
If Maryland has her Prof. De\v, let him tell us how 
much the internal slave-trade has to do w^ith this 
diminished per centage. But however this may be, 
the great increase of the free colored population, is 
proof decisive of the tendency toward emancipation. 

Some indications of the same kind appear in other 
States. In Virginia, the increase of the free blacks 
in the ten years preceding the last census, was 



SLAVERY IN MARYLAND. 117 

27.49 per cent. ; that of the slaves, for the same pe- 
riod, was only 11.85 per cent. ; that of the whites, 
15.12 per cent. In North Carolina, for the same 
period, the increase oftthe free blacks was 33.74 per 
cent. ; that of the slaves, 19.79 per cent. ; that 
of the whites 12.79 per cent. In Kentucky, 
the increase of the free colored population, for 
the same period, was 67.18 per cent. ; that of the 
slaves, 30.36 per cent. ; that of the whites, 19.12 
per cent. In Tennessee, the increase of the free 
blacks for the same period, was 63.9 per cent. In 
Ohio, which, bordering upon a slave region, re- 
ceives a great share of the slaves emancipated in the 
neighboring States, the increase of free blacks for 
the same period, was 96.91 per cent. In Indiana, 
during the same period, 2,499 free blacks were ad- 
ded to their numbers, making the increase of this 
portion of their population 195.04 per cent. These 
statistics show, that emancipation is all the while 
going on, not in Maryland alone, but in all the 
States in which the profits of slave labor are dimin- 
ishing. Taking the whole Union together, no class 
of population increases so rapidly as the free blacks. 
But what will be the result of emancipation in the 
more northern slave States 1 Will the emancipated 
population be removed 1 Will they be employed 
as laborers upon the soil ? Will they coalesce with 
the white population, sharing with them on equal 
terms in all the employments of society 1 These 
are questions not to be answered with much certain- 
ty ; yet some of the statements made by our author 
may be regarded as affording materials for an ap- 
proximation to a correct answer. 
6* 



118 SLAVERY IN MARYLAND. 

In Maryland, the labor of the free blacks is not con- 
sidered valuable. There, as at the north, they are 
found, not in the country laboring upon the soil, 
not in the workshop or manufactory, where w^ork 
is to be done with steady application, but congre- 
gated in the cities. In Baltimore alone, which con- 
tains not one twenty-fifth part of the slaves of Mary- 
land, nearly two-fifths of the free blacks maintain 
their existence, living by just such employments as 
support the free blacks in New York and the cities 
of New England. 

The labor of white men is superseding the labor 
both of slaves and of the free people of color. In those 
employments which require severe and steady effort, 
not only is a decided preference given to the labor 
of white men, but white laborers are found in suffi- 
cient numbers to meet the demand. Mr. Andrews 
tells us, that all the great public works in Maryland 
have been constructed almost exclusively by the 
hands of Irishmen. He tells us furthermore, what 
every traveler passing that way has occasion to ob- 
serve, that even in Baltimore, the Irish and other 
foreigners are competitors with the blacks for em- 
ployment as porters, carmen, ostlers, and domestic 
sevants. There is a constant immigration of foreign 
laborers into Baltimore. We find among our memo- 
randa the following fact, stated at the time in one 
of the newspapers of that city. Between the first 
and the twenty-fifth of June, 1833, nearly seventeen 
hundred emigrants from Europe, of whom about 
one hundred and fifty were Irish, and the remainder 
nearly all Germans and Swiss, arrived at Baltimore, 
and were expected to settle in that part of the coun- 



SLAVERY IN MARYLAND. _H9 

try. Such facts show, that in that region the labor 
of white men is likely to supersede the labor of the 
free blacks, as well as of the slaves. A similar com- 
petition exists to some extent in almost every part 
of the country. An intelligent gentleman from 
South Carolina, who had no theory to support, re- 
marked to Mr. Andrews, that even there. Irishmen 
were ready to do anything that the free blacks might 
be wanted to do. 

Yet it is not impossible for the free blacks to 
find employment. The demand for labor is so great 
in this country, that all sorts of laborers are in re- 
quest. In New York it is remarked, that the colored 
people, by their address and ingenuity, contrive to 
monopolize, to a considerable extent, a certain class 
of employments, and to turn over to their Irish com- 
petitors the more toilsome business of carrying mor- 
tar, breaking stone, or digging and plying the wheel- 
barrow upon roads and canals. In Baltimore, Mr. 
A. observed, that many of the free people of color 
were much better dressed than the lower class of 
white people, particularly the Irish. As domestic 
servants, those colored people who have been brought 
up to that business are far better than any others in 
this country. Thousands of the better sort of the 
free colored people at the south, might find immedi- 
ate employment in NeAV England, to the great relief 
of many a householder, whose daily grief is to hear 
the groanings of his helpmate over the unskillfulness 
and misrule of her kitchen cabinet, and the diflficul- 
ty, so unheard of in politics, of filling vacant places. 

The mortality among the blacks is greater than in 
any other class of the community. For eleven years, 



120 SLAVERY IN MARYLAND. 

the record of deaths in the city of Baltimore has 
carefully distinguished the three classes of white, free 
blacks, and slaves. The deaths among the free 
blacks annually, are one in twenty-nine ; among the 
whites, one in thirty-eight ; among the slaves, only 
one in fort) -four. If distinct records of the deaths 
in each of these three classes were kept everywhere, 
the proportion might not indeed be everywhere 
the same ; but there is great reason to believe, that 
similar results would everywhere appear. Mr. An- 
drews suggests the inquiry, whether it may not be 
that slavery alone prevents the colored race in the 
United States from a gradual extinction. Let us see 
what facts there are to answer this inquiry. The 
colored population of Massachusetts increased at the 
rate of only 2.62 per cent, in the ten years preceding 
the last census. Yet Massachusetts, while she sends 
out no colored emigrants, is every summer receiv- 
ing into her metropolis colored emigrants from other 
States. Rhode Island has large towns to give refuge 
and employment to the colored people ; yet in 
Rhode Island, for twenty years before the last cen- 
sus, the colored population was slowly decreasing. 
Connecticut sends no colored people to Georgia, to 
Illinois, or to Liberia; but, on the contrary, her 
cities are continually receiving colored people from 
the south ; yet in Connecticut the increase of tire 
colored population, for the ten years preceding the 
last census, was only 0.38 per cent. None of our 
readers need to be reminded how the colored people 
from all the south crowd into the great cities of New 
York ; yet the increase of the colored population of 
that State was only 12.17 per cent, in ten years. In 



SLAVERY IN MARYLAND. 121 

New Jersey the increase was less than two per cent. 
Now cut off from these northern States the supply- 
that pours from the south, and how long would 
there be here any colored population to be counted 1 

We have no room to go into the theory of this 
subject. Let it suffice to indicate one or two princi- 
ples. The only possible check upon the growth of 
a slave population must be either the cruelty of the 
master, or his absolute inability to give them food. 
No moral " preventive check," no prudence, no 
dread of poverty, can prevent slaves from fulfilling 
to the utmost that great mandate, '' increase and 
multiply." And when the children are once 
brought into the world, they are not the children of 
paupers, exposed to the wants, the perils, the dis- 
eases of poverty ; they belong to a rich man, who 
must feed them and provide for them, if he be not a 
monster. But when the slaves become free, all the 
checks upon population begin to operate. And the 
more sudden the emancipation, the more rapid will 
be the working of these checks. 

What, then, may we anticipate, as the destiny of 
the colored population of this country 1 If there are 
districts of this country, where the climate forbids 
the white man to labor, those districts will undoubt- 
edly be inhabited by blacks. But in every other 
part, will not the white man be ultimately the labor- 
er and the sole possessor ? It is not for us to an- 
swer this question positively. We only say, that the 
question is worth studying. 



LETTER 



TO THE EDITOR OF THE PHIL. CHRISTIAN OBSERVER, 1545. 



[As the following letter is referred to on a subsequent page, and as it 
contains not only an outline of the following series, but some thoughts 
which are not repeated elsewhere, it seems proper to give it a place in 
this collection. It explains for itself the occasion on which it was 
written.] 



Mr. Editor: — Some person has been kind enough 
to send me your paper of the 5th instant, in which a 
writei-jsubscribing himself * A Puritan at the South," 
animadverts with some freedom upon a speech 
which he supposes me to have made at the last meet- 
ing of the General Association of Connecticut, and 
of which he has found some representation in the 
Boston Recorder. I have not seen the Boston Re- 
corder to which he refers, and therefore I cannot say 
whether the report of my speech there is correct or 
not. I only know that elsewhere I have seen it 
decidedly mis-reported. 

The passage which your correspondent has quoted 
from my speech, is not a very unfair representation 
of something which I said, if the connection in which 
it was said is fairly given by the reporter — which I 
am bound to presume is not the case, inasmuch as 



PHILADELPHU CHRISTIAN OBSERVER. 123 

your correspondent makes no allusion to the course 
of my argument, on which the meaning of that pas- 
sage entirely depends. I said nothing in that speech, 
I believe, which I have not often said in print, with 
at least equal strength of language, years ago ; and 
because I have taken just the position which I took 
in that speech, those who in this part of the country 
call themselves the only <' friends of the slave," have 
made me — as your correspondent knows, if he knows 
anything about me in this relation — a mark of spe- 
cial obloquy. 

My positions were, in effect, and ^'for substance," 
briefly these : 

1. The relation of master to one whom the laws 
and the constitution of society have made a slave, is 
not intrinsically and necessarily a sin on the part of 
the master ; certainly not such a sin as will justify 
a sentence of excommunication against him, without 
inquiry as to how he came into that relation, or how 
he conducts himself in it. 

2. The master who buys and sells human beings, 
like cattle, for gain ; who permits male and female 
servants, placed by law under his protection and 
control, to live together in brutish concubinage, or 
in a merely temporary pairing, with no religious 
sanctity, which is not only unprotected by the law, 
but which he himself considers liable to be dissolved 
at (he caprice of the parties, or whenever his conve- 
nience or gain may require the separation; who re- 
fuses to train his servants diligently, from their child- 
hood up, in the knowledge of God and in the way 
of salvation, and of the book of God, and whose ser- 
vants, in a word, live and die in heathenish igno- 



124 LETTER TO THE 

ranee ; or who treats his servants in any manner in- 
consistent with the fact that they are intelligent and 
voluntary beings who were created in God's image, 
and for whom Christ has died — does not make a 
creditable profession of Christian piety. Such a 
master has no more claim to recognition or commu- 
nion among Christ's disciples than a Turk might 
have, who, having renounced Mohammed, might 
present himself for membership in a Christian church 
while yet retaining a full ''patriarchal" seraglio of 
wives and concubines. 

3. It is not to be presumed that all masters, pro- 
fessing to be ''believing masters," are, of course, 
guilty of all or any of the crimes above described. 
But so far as the ministers, elders, or members of any 
church commit any of these crimes, and the church 
to which they are responsible in respect to their 
Christian character, does not deal with them as of- 
fenders, to bring them to repentance, or if they will 
not repent, to cut them off as reprobate, so far that 
church is liable to be called to account by every and 
any church with which it is in communion. And it 
is the duty of all churches with which a church so 
neglecting the discipline of Christ's house may de- 
sire communion, to admonish that church, and labor 
with it for its reformation, and, in the event of the 
failure of such efforts, then to withdraw from all 
communion with it. 

4. Those laws of the southern States, by the force 
of which the crimes above mentioned, and others of 
the same general description, instead of being for- 
bidden and punished, are permitted and promoted, 
are a shame to human nature, especially when con- 



PHILADELPHIA CHRISTIAN OBSERVER. 125 

siderecl as the laws of a people glorying in their 
freedom, their honor, and {proh pudor) their mag- 
nanimity. The system of slavery in these United 
States, as it exists in its own theory, apart from any 
question of fact in respect to the working of the sys- 
tem — the system of slavery, simply as set forth in 
the laws respecting slavery — is a system which be- 
longs, historically and philosophically, to the lowest 
stage, save one, of human barl)arism. The exist- 
ence of such a body of laws in the statute-books of 
free A.merican states, "Anglo Saxon" in lineage, 
and pretending to be Christian, is enough to make 
the cheek of an American, anywhere, tingle with 
shame. It is often said that no people can be, on the 
whole, better than their laws are. I believe that thou- 
sands of the southern people are a great deal better 
than their laws are. I try all I can to believe that the 
entire people of the south are better, in fact, than 
they are, as represented by their laws — though some- 
times, I must confess, I have to try very hard, espe- 
cially when such events happen as that which hap- 
pened a few days ago at Lexington, and that which 
happened last winter at Charleston. I do believe 
that there are thousands of southern men whose mo- 
ral sense is shocked, as mine is, by the atrocity of 
those defences of slavery which are put forth now 
and then by the Hammonds, the McDuffies, and the 
Dews. But, after all, the fact remains. Those bar- 
barian laws stand in the statute-books ; and of the 
thousands who at heart detest them, who dares to 
propose a repeal or an amendment? Who dares 
even to utter a protest against them ? Public opin- 
ion at the south — or what passes for public opinion— 



126 LETTER TO THE 

annihilates, on this subject, the freedom of the press, 
the freedom of speech, and even the right of private 
judgment. No people upon earth are more governed 
by public opinion, or have less idea of (he possibility 
of resisting public opinion, than the people of our 
southern States, particularly in relation to this sub- 
ject. Public opinion makes them murder each other 
— like cowards who dare not refuse to do what they 
know to be wrong — in duels. Public opinion, speak- 
ing in the hoarse clamors of the blood-thirsty mob, 
and in the terrific sentence of the Lynch court, com- 
pels the thousands who detest those laws about sla- 
very to digest their detestation in silence. This very 
habit of being governed by a local public opinion, 
and of regarding public opinion as a force that can- 
not possibly be resisted, makes the southern people, 
in proportion as their intercourse wath other commu- 
nities increases, and the eyes of the nations are turned 
with closer attention towards their " peculiar insti- 
tutions," more and more sensitive to the public opin- 
ion of the world at large. ''They that take the 
sword, shall perish by the sword." So they w^ho 
attempt to uphold an atrocious body of laws by the 
tyranny of public opinion, are already beginning to 
writhe under the indignant public opinion of the civ- 
ilized W'Orld. I say, then, let the voice of universal 
human nature utter itself against those laws. 

It is not through any want of sensibility to shame, 
but only through ignorance and thoughtlessness of 
what the public opinion of the world really is, that 
citizens of the States in which that atrocious system 
of laws exists, are able to look citizens of other States, 
or the subjects of other governments, in the face 



PHILADELPHIA CHRISTUN OBSERVER. 127 

without blushing. What Virginian or Carolinian 
would not blush, to be told at a northern watering- 
place, in the presence of enlightened foreigners — 
Sir, the laws of your State permit a man to sell his 
own son, as he would a mule; or his own daughter, 
only a shade yellower than himself, as he would sell 
a horse. What stuff is that chivalry made of, that 
would not cower to be told that in the chivalrous 
land of the sunny south, the chastity of more than 
a million of women is without a shadow of legal 
protection — that the father, the brother, or the hus- 
band of one of those women, if he should lift his hand 
against the seducer or the ravisher, might be killed 
on the spot, as if he were a mad dog ? I cannot be- 
lieve that the people of the south — the more intelli- 
gent portion of them particularly — are so insensible 
to the public opinion of the world as not to care 
what the world thinks of these laws of theirs, which, 
instead of requiring the master to render to his ser- 
vants that which is just and equal, forbid his paying 
them wages ; which, instead of requiring the mas- 
ter to see that his servants receive such an education 
as an enlightened State ought to furnish for every 
human being reared under its jurisdiction, make it 
a crime to teach a slave the alphabet ; and which, 
instead of regarding the slave as a being having per- 
sonal rights, even against his master, make it impos- 
sible for the master to endow him with any rights 
whatever. 

Your correspondent, Mr. Editor, and what is of 
more consequence, your readers, can see whether 
my language is, as he affirms, '' sufficiently indis- 
criminate and abusive to gratify the feelings of the 



128 LETTER TO THE 

most thorough-going political revilers of the day." 
In my views, and in ray language, I ' discriminate' 
carefully between the relation of a master to one 
whom society has made a slave, and the conduct of 
that master in that relation — or in other words, be- 
tween the powet of doing wrong which the law 
gives to the master as against the slave, and the use 
which the master makes of that power. I ' discrimi- 
nate' carefully between the churches of the south 
and the offences of individuals in communion with 
those churches, and instead of excommunicating all 
slaveholders simply as suchj and all churches which 
contain slaveholders^ I would, in the discharge of a 
fraternal duty, call upon the southern churches 
themselves to put in force the discipline of Christ's 
house against specific sins^ which their own moral 
sense acknowledges to be incompatible with the 
credibility of a Christian profession. I also ^ dis- 
criminate' between the laws of the Southern States 
respecting slavery and the blacks, and the individu- 
al citizens of those States ; and while I regard those 
laws with unlimited abhorrence as a disgrace to my 
country and a disgrace to the human species, I re- 
gard the people of those States as better than their 
laws — thousands of them a great deal better. I am 
willing to treat individual citizens of slaveholding 
States with all the courtesy and respect due to gen- 
tlemen and to American fellow-citizens, except as I 
find individuals unworthy of such treatment. But 
they on the other hand must allow me, here at home, 
a freeman's privilege of abhorring slavery and of 
uttering my abhorrence. So I could treat a gentle- 
manly Turk or Persian with courtesy and hospitali- 



PHILADELPHIA CHRISTIAN OBSERVER. 129 

ty in my New England home, but he must not re- 
quire me to give up my Christian and American 
opinions, out of complaisance to his Islamism and 
his polygamy. 

Your correspondent seems to intimate that I, as 
living in a free-labor State, am necessarily too igno- 
rant on the subject of slavery to have any opinion 
worth regarding. As if a man could not tell whether 
it is wrong to buy and sell human beings at pub- 
lic auction " in lots to suit purchasers," without liv- 
ing in a slave State. As if the public opinion of a 
slave State, armed with the fui4es of Lynch law, and 
assuming an unlimited arbitrary power over every 
man's private judgment (unless it is very private 
indeed) were a necessary guide for erring human 
nature to a knowledge of the right and wrong about 
slavery. As if I, living here, where every man is 
free to think and free to speak on every side, and 
where I have had the privilege of receiving through 
the post-office no fewer than three copies of Gov. 
Hammond's defence of slavery, were less competent 
to form an unbiased opinion, than I should be if I 
lived where no man is allowed to speak but on one 
side, and where, if I should be so unfortvmate as to 
form an opinion contrary to public opinion, and 
should be found out in it, the least that I, as a 
northern man, could expect, would be to be arrayed 
in tar and feathers, unless I should make my escape 
as a felon flees from justice. 

Your correspondent farther suggests that if I 
*^ would reform the institutions of the south," I 
ought to <^ come and dwell" there, where the work 
is to be done. Let me say then, that I have not un- 



130 LETTER TO THE OBSERVER. 

dertaken to reform the institutions of the south. I 
leave that work in the hands of the people of the 
south to whom it belongs, and whom God will hold 
accountable for it. I acknowledge the kindness of 
your correspondent's hospitable invitation, but God 
has given me a better lot. '' The lines are fallen to 
me in pleasant places." I find myself where all the 
work that I can do comes daily to my hands ; and I 
do not conceive that, considering all my relations, I 
could do more for the kingdom of Christ, or the 
welfare of my country there, than I can here. If 
God had cast my lot there, I would stay there ; for 
nowhere upon earth can more good be done by a 
good man who is native on the soil and has the con- 
fidence of the people, than there. I would not go 
on a foreign mission, and leave that field behind 
me ; it were as wise to go from China on a foreign 
mission to Kamschatka. Least of all would I, like 
some southern ministers, seek a settlement at the 
north for the sake of getting away from slavery. 

Respectfully yours, 

Leonard Bacon. 
JVew-Haven, SepU 8, 1845, 



THE COLLISION 



BETWEEN THE 



ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY AND THE AMERICAN BOARD, 



[new YORK EVANGELIST, IS46.] 



To THE Editors of the New- York Evangelist: 

Gentlemen: — I have felt myself called to prepare the following pa- 
pers, because I see, in some quarters, evidence that the question be- 
tween the Anti-Slavery Society and the Foreign Missionary Board 
needs once more to be distinctly stated, and that the position of the 
Board is not fairly understood. I send the papers to you, asking a 
place for them in the columns of your journal, instead of attemptii g 
any other form of publication, because 1 know not in what other way 
I can reach so many of those readers who are in a state of mind to be 
influenced by the views which I wish to present. 

The extent to which my name has been used in connection with this 
subject, seems on the whole to require that what I publish shall be on 
my own responsibility. Yours, &c., 

Leonard Bacon. 

New-Haven, Jan, 22, 1846. 



NO. I. THE QUESTION STATED. 

Among the many mischievous effects of slavery 
in its unnatural connection with our republican and 
Christian institutions, is that erratic philanthropy 
which has usurped the name of abolitionism. There 
is so much in slavery that excites the mind to indig- 
nation ; the subject, at the same time, is so compli- 



132 THE COLLISION. 

cated in its nature and relations, touching upon so 
many interests, commercial, political, and religious ; 
that there is no wonder we find opposition to slavery 
continually tending to extravagances of statement 
and of action. So it will be while slavery contin- 
ues. The odious and atrocious injustice of the sys- 
tem is enough to ''make a wise man mad;" how 
much more will it inflame to madness those whose 
feelings are more than a match for their wisdom. 

The Anti-Slavery Societies of the northern States, 
as is well known, have been for many years coming 
into frequent collision with all sorts of religious and 
philanthropic bodies. This has come to pass on the 
part of the anti-slavery leaders, not in mere malice 
or for the sake of working mischief, but in the belief 
that if the religious and philanthropic bodies in this 
part of the country can all be made auxiliary to the 
Anti-Slavery Society, then that Society will be strong 
enough to abolish slavery. Under the influence of 
such a belief, colleges, theological seminaries, 
churches and ecclesiastical organizations. Tract, Bi- 
ble, and Missionary Societies, have all been assailed, 
with various success. 

The American Board of Commissioners for For- 
eign Missions, has been to these reformers an object 
of special regard. So extensive have been the opera- 
tions of that institution ; so signal has been the suc- 
cess of some of its missions; and so great is the con- 
fidence with which it is honored by the New Eng- 
land churches, and by churches elsewhere, of New 
England sympathies ; that it has seemed to anti- 
slavery leaders to be just the instrument with which 
to accomplish their great design. If the Board of 



THE COLLISION. 



133 



Foreign Missions could only be brought into an 
auxiliary relation to the Anti-Slavery Society, then 
surely the anti-slavery cause would triumph. 

Accordingly from year to year, for I know not 
how long, the anti-slavery question in one form or 
another has been brought, by memorial or other- 
wise, into the conventions of the Board. To go into 
the history of these proceedings would perhaps be 
tedious. A summary may be found in a pamphlet 
lately published by the Prudential Committee, which 
is probably within the reach of as many as would 
take any special interest in reading it. I will say, 
however, that in my opinion the principal error in 
the proceedings of the Board heretofore — if there 
has been error on their part — has been that they 
have not given, in answer to the various applications 
that have been made to them from time to time, a 
brief and peremptory definition of their principles 
in the form of distinct and well-considered proposi- 
tions, such as might be easily taken into the mind 
and easily remembered. The action of tlie Board 
has not been in the form of resolutions affirming or 
denying certain propositions respecting slavery ; but 
only in the form of the acceptance of an essay, or a 
diplomatic reply to the memorialists, from a com- 
mittee. In connection with this, there has seemed 
to be some sort of reluctance to meet the question 
face to face. Much has been said, and to very little 
purpose in my view, about the '' one object" of the 
Board, the propagation of the gospel, and about the 
impropriety of turning aside from that great and 
good work for the sake of settling questions about 
slavery, or for the sake of co-operating in particular 
7 



134 THE COLLISION. 

schemes of reformation ; whereas, nothing is'more 
palpable than that if the Anti-Slavery Society, as 
represented by its publications and its executive 
officers, is right — if the master of a slave, simply as 
such, without any reference to his treatment of the 
slave, is *' a man-stealer," and is to be considered b}^ 
all Christians as a heathen man and a publican — then 
it is the duty of the Board, as a society instituted for 
the one purpose of propagating the gospel, to say so 
outright without regard to consequences, and to in- 
struct its Prudential Committee and all its agents 
and missionaries, to adopt that principle unswerv- 
ingly in all its applications. And on the other 
hand, if the one only characteristic principle of the 
Anti-Slavery Society is, as I do earnestly believe, 
a miserable, paltering, juggling sophism, that can 
have no better effect than to mislead and madden 
enthusiastic minds, and to irritate the passions of 
the slaveholder while it sears his conscience — then, 
at the very first obtrusion of this principle, it ought 
to have been met with a firm and peremptory denial, 
in language not to be misunderstood. But the suc- 
cessive reports which have been presented by com- 
mittees and accepted by the Board, have so careful- 
ly abstained from the abstract assertion of general 
principles, have had so much to do with the state- 
ment and explanation of particular facts, and have 
shown so much desire to conciliate the anti-slavery 
movement, that the leaders of that movement have 
been encouraged with the hope of ultimate success. 
It was quite natural for them to reason that if agita- 
tion had accomplished so much, then more agitation 
ould accomplish more. 



THE COLLISION. 23^ 

The late annual meeting of the Board, at Brook- 
lyn, Avas signalized by a discussion of slavery in its 
relations to the missionary work. Never before had 
the subject been debated in that body. Many feared 
the occurrence of such a discussion as a great evil. 
Many apprehended that it would be accompanied 
with popular excitement, and with such scenes of 
agitation as have accompanied similar discussions 
in other religious and philanthropic assemblies. At 
former meetings, the subject had been considered 
only in committees — the reports of the committees 
being presented near the close of the session, and 
adopted without debate. But in this instance, the 
discussion was anticipated by those who planned 
the arrangement of business for the meeting ; and 
everything was very properly allowed to give way 
before the paramount urgency of the anti-slavery 
question. The debate occupied the greater part of 
the entire session. It was free ; there was no res- 
traint put upon the utterance of any opinion, how- 
ever extreme. On the one hand, there were the 
strongest denunciations, not only of slavery, but of 
all who are masters of slaves — on the other hand 
there was a speech from a South Carolina clergy- 
man, suited exactly to the meridian of Charleston — 
and both were heard with exemplary patience. 
The discussion was bold, partly in consequence of 
its being free ; every man who spoke seemed to ex- 
press his opinion without fear of giving offence. At 
the same time, it was characterized by decorum. 
Though the number of members present, corporate 
and honorary, was more than six hundred, all of 
whom had the same right to speak ; and though, in 



136 THE COLLISION. 

the absence of all concert or consultation as to who 
should lead in the argument, some fifty or more were 
ready and anxious to take part in the debate ; there 
was no unseemly contending for the floor, and only 
once or twice was there any occasion for a call to order. 
And notwithstanding the necessarily desultory char- 
acter of an unprepared debate, on such a subject, in 
such an assembly, all will agree that it was on the 
whole an uncommonly able discussion. On the 
part of the Anti-Slavery Society, the leader in the 
debate was the Rev. Amos A. Phelps, the Society's 
principal secretary ; a man not surpassed in logical 
acumen, or in the capacity of seeing the force of dis- 
tinctions and arguments, or in controversial experi- 
ence, by any of the chiefs of that organization ; a 
man who having given the best 3^ears of his life, 
and the powers of a well-cultivated mind, to the 
study and practice of anti-slavery as a profession, 
and having made himself familiar with all depart- 
ments of the subject, needed not, like some others, 
to retail the stereotyped common-places of fourth-rate 
anti-slavery lectures. On the other side, it will not 
be invidious to mention the speeches of Dr. Edward 
Beecher and Prof. Stowe, as characterized by emi- 
nent learning and great force of argument. 

The form in which the question presented itself 
for discussion on that occasion, was perhaps the 
very best form in which it could arise. In other 
forms in which the question might have been pre- 
sented, it would have been entangled with side 
questions of expediency ; so that many individuals, 
dissenting entirely from the characteristic principle 
of the Anti-Slavery Society, might have been con- 



THE COLLISION. 137 

Strained to vote with'the adherents of that principle. 
Thus, had the question been on the employment of 
slave-owners as missionaries, the men who hold the 
doctrine of the Anti-Slavery Society would have 
answered in the negative, because the slave-owner, 
as they judge, is in every possible case a man-steal- 
er ; and at the same time many others would have 
answered in the negative with equal emphasis, for 
very different reasons — such as that the slave-owner 
owes to the slaves who in the providence of God 
are under his protection, certain duties which re- 
quire him to remain with them — and that if he is 
the right man in other respects for the foreign mis- 
sionary work, he is more likely to do good in South 
Carolina or Mississippi than in Syria or Africa. 
Or had the question been whether to send agents to 
the southern churches, soliciting their contributions, 
the consistent upholders of the Anti-Slavery Society- 
would have answered. No, because the southern 
churches admit slaveholders to communion, and 
because, in their judgment, every such church is no 
better than a synagogue of Satan ; while many- 
others would also have said. No, as thinking that 
the contributions thus realized would not repay the 
expense and trouble accruing — or as of opinion that 
the southern churches have more missionary work 
among the black heathen within their own borders, 
than they are likely to attend to— or as judging that 
any attempt at extensive co-operation between the 
northern churches and the southern, is likely to re- 
sult in painful collisions, and to hinder instead of 
promoting the natural action of Christianity againit 
slavery. But in this instance the only question that 



138 THE COLLISION. 

could legitimately be raised, was the question whe- 
ther every slave-master is to be excommunicated 
from the church, simply as standing in that re- 
lation. 

Perhaps I may be allowed briefly to recall the 
leading facts of the case to the remembrance of my 
readers. Negro slavery, it seems, has existed for 
more than sixty years, to a limited extent, in the 
Cherokee and Choctaw nations of Indians. The 
churches formed by the missionaries in those two 
nations, have received to communion some few in- 
dividuals who are the owners of slaves. This fact 
having been seized upon by the Anti-Slavery Socie- 
ty, memorials were sent to the Board, from some 
very respectable sources, requesting that the Board 
would take " such action as shall speedily remove 
the evil." At the meeting in 1844, these memorials 
were put into the hands of a committee, consisting 
of Rev. Dr. Woods and Rev. David Sandford and 
David Greene, of Masssachusetts ; Rev. Dr. Tyler 
and Hon. T. W. Williams, of Connecticut ; Chan- 
cellor Walworth and Rev. J. W. McLane, of New 
York; Rev. Dr. Tappan and Rev. S. L. Pomeroy, 
of Maine, and Rev. Dr. Stowe, of Ohio. Of these 
gentlemen, two, Dr. Woods, and Mr. Greene, are 
;«robably the only individuals against whom the 
Anti-Slavery Society had any special prejudice; 
three, Dr. Tappan, Mr. Sandford and Mr. Pomeroy, 
call themselves, and are commonly called, abolition- 
ists, and are, it is believed, members of the Anti- 
Slavery Society; Mr. Sandford was himself one of 
the memorialists. It was the duty of this Committee 
to obtain information respecting the facts alleged 



THE COLLISION. 139 

and complained of by the memorialists, and to re- 
port at the meeting in 1845. Nor did the gentlemen 
perform their duty negligently. Every one of them, 
except Mr. Pomeroy, who was absent in Europe, 
attended to the business in person. After the neces- 
sary information had been obtained by correspond- 
ence with the missions, the Committee met to agree 
on their report. The draft of a report, which had 
been prepared by the chairman, was not entirely 
satisfactory ; and after a full discussion of the prin- 
ciples that were to be asserted and adhered to, it 
w^as put into the hands of a sub -committee. At a 
later meeting, the sub-committee presented a new 
draft, which, after further discussion and amend- 
ment, was agreed to as the report of the Committee, 
and in that form was presented to the Board at 
Brooklyn. 

The form of the report — the ordinary form of re- 
ports in that body — had this disadvantage, that in 
the discussion and decision there was a necessity of 
taking, or rejecting it, as a whole. There was no 
series of propositions to be separately discussed, and 
separately voted on. Some of the most important 
principles of the case are introduced indirectly, and 
as it were, by the way, rather than put forward with 
as much prominence as some might desire. All that 
the report contains, and all that it does not contain, 
could hardly be ascertained by the mere hearer, at 
one reading, or even at two. The representatives 
of the Anti-Slavery Society, however, were not long 
in perceiving that it did not contain their doctrine 
directly or indirectly. It was not enough for them 
to see, that it condemns the institution of slavery as 



140 THE COLLISION. 

an institution at war with natural justice and with 
all the principles and designs of the gospel, and as 
an arrangement which the legitimate influence of 
the gospel will surely abolish ; it must go farther, if it 
is to please them. All the injustice and mischiev- 
ousness of the institution, it must impute to every 
individual whom that institution invests with power 
over his fellow-men ; and it must pronounce ana- 
thema against him, without inquiring how he ad- 
ministers that power. Accordingly Mr. Phelps, at 
an early stage of the debate, proposed an amend- 
ment in two parts, for the purpose of making the 
report agree precisely with the peculiar and charac- 
teristic dogma of his Society. He moved to amend 
the report as follows : 

1. By inserting the words, " and practice," after the words 
" system," in all those passages which speak of the system as 
wicked, unrighteous, &c., so that they will read " the wicked- 
ness of tile system and practice of slavery." &c., &c. 

2. By appending the following as the conclusion of the report, 
viz. : 

*' In conclusion, the Board adopt the following preamble and 
resolutions as a summary exposition of the views and principles 
embodied in the foregoing remarks, and of the rules that should 
govern the Executive officers and missionaries of the Board in 
their practical application. 

Whereas, in the providence of God, this Board, in conducting 
its operations among the Indians and elsewhere, has been brought 
into such contact with slavery as to demand some judgment of 
the Board respecting its moral character, and the adoption of 
some general rules of conduct for the guidance of its Executive 
officers and missionaries, in cases where they are brought in con- 
tact with it, while seeking their one great object, therefore. 

Resolved, That as this Board regard the system and practice 
of slaveholding as a great moral evil, entirely opposed to the 



THE COLLISION. 141 

spirit and principles of the gospel whose propagation is its espe- 
cial and appropriate work ; it can never in the persons of its offi- 
cers, agents, or missionaries, sustain any relation to it, implying 
either approbation or sanction. 

Resolved, That in accordance with this general principle, this 
Board cannot appoint or sustain slaveholders, remaining such af- 
ter remonstrance, as missionaries. 

Resolved, That while this Board will not imperatively direct or 
concern itself with the internal discipline of churches gathered 
by its missionaries on heathen ground, as it might seem to be an 
unauthorized interference with the liberty of Christ's house, so 
neither can it allow such missionaries to interfere in a similar 
way with its liberty in the appropriation of its funds ; and there- 
fore, that as this Board, in the exercise of its liberty, would feel 
called upon to withdraw its support from missionaries and 
churches receiving drunkards, gamblers, and the like to their 
communion and retaining them in it, so it cannot continue its 
appropriations to missionaries and churches which, after remon- 
strances on the subject, deliberately continue to receive slave- 
holders remaining such after due admonition, to their bosom and 
retain them in it. 

Resolved, That the Board will expect its missionaries, minis- 
tering to churches that have slaveholders in them, to pursue the 
same course in respect to their instruction, admonition, and disci- 
pline as slaveholders, as if the same individuals were drunkards, 
gamblers, or the like, and that if the missionaries, in the exercise 
of their liberty and after full dehberation, shall decline to do so, 
this Board hereby directs its Executive officers to dissolve farther 
connection with them as missionaries of this body." 

Of this Mr. Phelps, in a document since published 
by him in his official capacity as Secretary of the 
Anti-Slavery Society,* says : 

" This, of course, as was our object in offering it, brought the 
discussion to a point ; and that point was simply this, viz. : whe- 
ther in the matter of instruction, admonition, and discipline, the 



* American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter, October, 1845. 



142 THE COLLISION. 

Board would expect its missionaries 9.;)d i^issipji churches to 
treat slaveholdingjust as they would drunkenness, gaming, fals-e- 
hood, idolatry, ai^d the like. The report and the -speakers had 
virtually said they would expect them to do so in respect to spe- e 
ciiic forms of maltreatment and personal abuse. The amead-''' 
ment raised the question whether they would.-expect thenv-i^:do 
so in regard to slaveholding itself. In other t'erms, it raised the 
question whether slaveholding, as such, is to be classed with the 
other offences named,*and whether so classed, instruction is- to be"* 
given against it by missionaries, and admonition and discipline to 
be administered against it by them and the churches', in the same 
way, and onlyin the same, as in respect to said other offences." 

This paragraph has its value, as showing- that I 
do not misrepresent the actual question between the 
Anti-Slavery Society and the Ame^jcan Board. The 
question, according to Mr. Phelps' showing, is not 
a question respecting '^ specific forms of maltreat- 
ment." To condemn every specific wrong which 
the master may commit in theexercise of the power 
which the 1-aws give him over his slaves, is not 
enough. To condemn him for buying, and selling 
human beings as merchandise ; to condemn him, in 
detail, for regarding and treating his servants as 
mere chattels ; to condemn him for every particular 
act of wrong-doing towards them which convicts 
him of a selfish and unchristian heart ; to condemn 
him for not duly recognizing their natural rights in 
the parental and conjugal relations, and for neg- 
lecting the necessities of their intellectual and moral 
nature, and their dignity as bretliren of the human 
family, and as immortal beings to whom God speaks 
in the gospel — ^^all this is not enough. The Anti- 
Slavery Society demands that he shall be condemned 
for the relation itself, without any inquiry touching 



THE COLLISION. 143 

his conduct in that relation. In the Anti-Slavery 
Society's creed, he that condemns a slave-owner 
only for well-defined individual acts of oppression, 
does the work of the Lord deceitfully ; we are re- 
quired to go back farther, and to condemn him for 
having the power to oppress. 

Before taking leave of Mr. Phelps' paragraph 
above quoted, I cannot but remark, that the debate 
itself, as reported in the New York newspapers of 
that week, does not seem to correspond with his 
opinion that his motion to amend ''brought the dis- 
cussion to a point." The speeches prior to his mo- 
tion — after a preliminary question, strangely raised, 
respecting the jurisdiction of the Board, had been 
cleared up — were as nearly to the point as those that 
followed. The issue presented in Mr. P.'s resolu- 
tions, is precisely the issue which was presented, 
under another form, in the report. The question 
discussed in the report, is not whether slavery is 
wrong as a political system, and is everywhere and 
necessarily mischievous ; nor is it the question whe- 
ther the treating of human beings as merchandise, 
or as having no personal rights, by those who hap- 
pen to have the power of so doing, is wrong ; it is 
simply the question whether the mere relation of a 
slave-owner is always and necessarily a crime, and 
as such incompatible with a Christian profession. 
That question the report answers in the negative; 
and it proposes, accordingly, that every individual 
instance of slave-ownership shall be judged in that 
respect by the missionaries and their churches. Mr. 
Phelps' amendment, on the contrary, gives to the 
same question an affirmative answer ; and it propo- 



144 THE COLLISION. 

ses to instruct the missionaries everywhere, and the 
missionary churches, that the mere possession of a 
master's authority over a slave, independent of all 
specific exercise of that authority, is to be visited 
with excommunication. Mr. Phelps' motion, then, 
produced, and could produce, no effect on the course 
or progress of the debate, save as it may have 
helped to diminish the possibility of misunderstand- 
ing the demands of the Society which he repre- 
sented. 

It was my wish to finish all that I have to say 
respecting the late meeting of the Board at Brook- 
lyn, in a single paper ; but I fear that in attempting 
to do so, I should occupy more space in the columns 
of the Evangelist, than would be consistent with the 
usual variety of matter in this widely read '^ folio of 
four pages." At this point, then, I pause, like a 
Congress orator suddenly struck down at the expi- 
ration of his hour. The present article may be con- 
sidered as a statement and explanation of the ques- 
tion on which the Board was to act. In another 
article, I propose to offer some considerations on the 
decision of the Board, and the position in which it 
stands in respect to the Anti-Slavery Society. 



NO. II. 

THE ACTION OF THE BOARD. 



The precise question before the Board should be 
distinctly remembered. It was not a question re- 
specting that political institution which we call si a- 



THE COLLISION. 145 

very. It'was not a question whether acts of wrong- 
doing on the part of masters toward their servants, 
are inconsistent with Christian character and Chris- 
tian communion. It was simply a question respect- 
ing the relation between a master and his slaves 
under* the laws of a State which has incorporated 
the system of slavery among its political institu- 
tions ; whether that relation, in itself, and without 
any specification of distinct acts of oppression com- 
mitted by virtue of the power which the relation 
involves, is a crime for which the master should be 
cut off from communion with every Christian church. 
This was the question which the report from the 
Committee answered in the negative, and which 
Mr. Phelps' motion for amendment answered in the 
affirmative. 

After the discussion had been prolonged till near 
the close of the second day, another amendment 
was moved by the writer of these papers, as a sub- 
stitute for that proposed by Mr. Phelps. It was in 
these words : 

" In conclusion, it seems proper for the Board, on this occasion, 
to put upon record a distinct assertion of the principles contained 
in the following resolutions : 

1. Resolved, That inasmuch as the system of domestic sla- 
very, under every modification, is at war with the principles of 
Christianity, with natural justice, with industry and thrift, with 
habits of subjection to law, and with whatever tends to the ad- 
vancement of civilization and the ascendency of the gospel, and 
inasmuch as it brings upon every community which establishes 
and upholds it, the righteous displeasure of God, and the repro- 
bation of the civilized and Christian world, the existence of sla- 
very in the Cherokee and Choctaw nations is deeply to be la- 
mented by their friends, and particularly by this Board, as hav- 



146 THE COLLISION. 

ing been, for more than a quarter of a century, engaged in labors 
tending to their moral, intellectual, and social advancement. 

2. Resolved, That while the strongest language of reprobation 
is not too strong to be applied to the system of slavery, truth and 
justice require this Board to say that the mere relation of a mas- 
ter to one whom the constitution of society has made a slave, is 
not to be regarded as in all cases such a sin as to require the ex- 
clusion of the master, without further inquiry, from Christian or- 
dinances. 

3. Resolved, That the missionaries of this Board, everywhere, 
are expected to admit to Christian ordinances those, and only 
those, who give satisfactory evidence of having become new 
creatures in Christ. 

4. Resolved, That the master who buys and sells human be- 
ings, as merchandise, for gain — who does not recognize in re- 
spect to his servants the divine sanctity of their relations as hus- 
bands and wives, and as parents and children — who permits 
them to live and die in ignorance of God and of God's Word — 
who does not render to his servants that which is just and equal, 
or who refuses to recognize heartily and practically their dignity 
and worth, as reasonable and immortal beings, for whom Christ 
has died, does not give satisfactory evidence of being born of 
God, or having the spirit of Christ." 

The reason stated for moving this amendment 
was in efTect, not that the report does not contain 
in some form of expression all that is contained in 
these resolutions, but that it seemed desirable to 
embody, in a formal series of propositions, or theses, 
a statement of what is and what is not to be con- 
demned, making certain distinctions so definitely 
that all parties should see them, and, if possible, 
should be compelled to adopt them, or to dissent 
from them, without mystification. The first reso- 
lution, accordingly, speaks of slavery as a political 
institution, and laments its introduction into the 



THE COLLISION. 147 

nascent civilization of tlie Cherokee and Choctaw 
nations ; and thus it contradicts, on the one hand, 
those who defend and uphold the institution of sla- 
very, which is done by many at the South, and 
which Dr. White was understood to do in that dis- 
cussion — and on the other hand, those who stigma- 
tize the Board, as defending and upholding slavery. 
The second resolution denies peremptorily the pe- 
culiar dogma of the Anti-Slavery Society. The 
third denies a principle assumed by some who hold 
that a slave-owner may give undeniable evidence 
of Christian character notwithstanding his relation 
to his slaves ; but who insist that even in that case 
he ought not to be admitted as a Christian to fel- 
lowship in Christian ordinances. The fourth points 
out the legitimate, and only legitimate application 
of church discipline against slavery, which is by 
censuring and excommunicating the sinner, not for 
having the power to do wrong, but for doing wrong 
— not for standing in a certain constituted relation 
toward his servants, but for his conduct toward them 
ill that relation. 

This motion to amend was heartily seconded. 
Nothing was said in opposition to it. But as the 
second day of the debate was then closing, and as 
the question before the house was becoming com- 
plicated with amendment upon amendment, it was 
judged best to recommit the whole subject ; and 
accordingly the original report, and both the pro- 
posed amendments, were put into the hands of Chief 
Justice Williams and five other gentlemen, one of 
whom (Rev. John C. Webster) was himself one of 
the memorialists. That Committee, the next morn- 



148 THE COLLISION. 

ing, recommended the adoption of the original report 
without amendment. In the debate which followed 
there were some passages which I may be allowed 
to notice. 

Immediately after the report had been made by 
Chief Justice Williams, with some explanations of 
the views of the Committee, the Rev. Dr. Tappan, 
who had served on both Committees, and who, I 
believe, not only claims the title of abolitionist, but 
has long been claimed by the Anti-Slavery Society 
as a patron, said, according to the summary of 
the debate given in the New-York Evangelist of 
that week, ^ 

" That every individual of the Committee approved of the 
principles of Dr. Bacon's resolutions, but it was feared that to 
append them to the report would look too much like legislation, 
and might seem to ecclesiastical bodies as if the Board was 
trenching upon their proper province. There are also other sub- 
stantial reasons ; and though the report was believed to contain 
every principle contained in the resolutions, it was unadvisable 
to state them in this formal manner." 

The American Board of Commissioners for For- 
eign Missions combines in one system of operations 
the foreign missionary charities of the New England 
Congregationalists, and the Constitutional (or New 
School) Presbyterians, and a respectable minority 
in the Old School body, and of the Reformed Dutch 
Church. The ecclesiastical bodies of New England 
have no such jealousy as that referred to by Dr. 
Tappan. Had the resolutions been adopted, no 
Association, no Conference, no church or council of 
churches, from Madawasca to Horseneck, would 



THE COLLISION. 149 

have suspected that the Board was going one hair's 
breadth out of its proper province. In the Presby- 
terian connection (New School) there might be 
some danger, but not much, of wakening that jea- 
lousy. The Dutch Church, however, conducts its 
foreign missionary operations in connection with 
the American Board, through an auxiliary board of 
its own, which is under the control of its ecclesias- 
tical judicatories. In that body, therefore, charac- 
terized as it is by a large, though not disreputable, 
share of the ecclesiastical spirit, some jealousy 
might easily be excited by any ill-considered pro- 
ceeding. Much deference is due to the judgment, 
and even to the prejudices, of such men as represent 
the Dutch Church in the American Board of Foreign 
Missions, and in other kindred institutions. If those 
men should say to me that the report in its original 
form would be highly satisfactory to them and to 
their brethren, and that the report with these reso- 
lutions appended would be likely to waken some 
jealousy on the part of their judicatories, and to 
retard the progress of missionary zeal in their con- 
gregations, I should feel at once that an element 
not before contemplated was to be taken into calcu- 
lation ; and that whatever advantages would result 
from the amendment in one direction, might be 
counterbalanced by the disadvantages in another 
quarter. Just so, if men perfectly acquainted with 
the state of the missions to the Choctaws and with 
the dangers which beset the missionaries, should 
tell me that the report in its original form would be 
safe in respect to any use that would be likely to be 
made of it by wicked men with the design of break- 



X50 THE COLLISION. 

ing up the missions, but that the resolutions might 
be employed by mahcious wliite men to embarrass 
the missionaries in their relation to the political 
authorities of the Choctaw nation, and to procure 
their expulsion from tlie field ; then, though the mat 
cceluni abolitionists miglit cry out. So much the bet- 
ter ! — let the missions be broken up ! — let the mis- 
sionaries be murdered ! — and might insist that the 
prospect of such resuUs was the best of all reasons 
for putting the decision of the Board into this pre- 
cise form ; — my sense of duty would constrain me 
to hesitate long before determining, in the face of 
such a risk, to sum up the principles and reasonings 
of the report in those resolutions at the end. I can 
conceive, therefore, of very good reasons why the 
Committee unanimously agreeing in the principles 
asserted by those resolutions, might deem it unne- 
cessary and unwise to express those principles in 
that particular form. And to any reader who cares 
to know what my opinion was as a member of that 
Committee, I may say that though my own mind 
was not fully convinced that any considerable harm 
was likely to result from the adoption of my amend- 
ment, I could, and did, acquiesce in the decision of 
the majority. 

After Dr. Tappan's speech, the Rev. Mr. Web- 
ster said, that he found himself compelled, with 
great reluctance, to differ from his colleagues of the 
Committee, and claimed the privilege of presenting 
'' a minority report," which he proceeded to offer in 
the form of a speech.* I subjoin the sketch of his 

* I know not why it should not be stated that in the Committee 
Mr. W. did not vote against the report— did not give any intimation of 



THE COLLISION. 251 

remarks given by the reporters for the New York 
Evangelist. 

" It was from no want of attachment to the Board, on the con- 
trary it was because he loved the Board, and because he desired 
this perplexing question to be settled in such a way as to pro- 
mote harmony of feeling, that he could not assent to the report 
as it is. He would have been satisfied with Dr. Bacon's resolu- 
tions ; and if all the principles of the resolutions w-ere contained 
in the report, he saw no good reason why they should not be 
frankly summed up at the close. This would have satisfied all 
parties. As it is, he feared that a large number of the Board's 
best friends would not be satisfied. The general impression will 
be that although slavery is condemned, there is a loop-hole left 
for all who love to hold slaves." 

I cannot but call attention distinctly to the posi- 
tions taken by Mr. Webster as a dissentient mem- 
ber of the Committee. He expressly gives up the 
Anti-Slavery dogma. ^^ He would have been satis- 
fied with Dr. Bacon^s resolutions^-^ which contain a 
deliberate and formal denial of the distinctive doc- 
trine of the Anti- Slavery Society, and which were 
proposed avowedly for the purpose— though not for 
the exclusive purpose — of uttering that denial. Nay, 
he speaks not for himself only, but for his party. 
^' This," he says — that is, the addition of the resolu- 



an intention to offer a minority report — nay, expressly said that he 
wished to be understood as voting neither for the report nor against it. 
It was, therefore, with some surprise that his "colleagues" of the 
Committee found him, in the morning, in the attitude of positive oppo- 
sition to the decision towards which, in the evening, his attitude had 
been that of passive acquiescence. His right to change his mind after 
communing with his own heart on his bed, is undoubted ; but it seems 
to me that so formal and unusual a step as that of offerino^ a " minority 
report" ought not to have been taken without giving notice to the ma- 
jority of the Committee, or at least as much notice as might be implied 
in a vote against their decision. 



252 THE COLLISION. 

tions as an amendment to the report — '^ this would 
have satisfied all par ties. ^^ His opposition to the 
report in the original form, is hecause it does not go 
so far as that amendment. '' The general impres- 
sion will be, that although slavery is condemned, 
there is a loop-hole left for all who love to hold 
slaves." The amendment, then, in his judgment, 
would have prevented this impression. I have no 
doubt that Mr. Webster was honest in this ; that he 
spoke as he felt. Nor have I any doubt that many 
anti-slavery men of the same kind felt as he did, 
and verily thought that they would have been satis- 
fied with my resolutions. 

Mr. Phelps, however, held his ground with un- 
flinching logical consistency. I might perhaps make 
one exception to this remark. There was a moment 
when truth seemed to be breaking into his mind 
through the thick drapery of sophisms which he 
weaves so skillfully, but it was only a moment. He 
made no such admissions as those into which Mr. 
Webster was led by his less practiced ingenuous- 
ness. The Anti-Slavery Society would have been 
in a sorry plight, had its Secretary been so inconse- 
quent in his reasonings as to profess himself satisfied 
with a resolution declaring that the mere relation of 
a master to his slaves is not necessarily a crime on 
the part of the master. Accordingly, Mr. P. em- 
braced that last opportunity to reassert his one great 
principle in a speech, and in a new motion to amend 
the report. His second motion for amendment was 
in eff'ect the same with the first. It proposed to 
make the report declare, in conclusion, that '^ the 
Board will expect its missionaries to treat slave- 



THE COLLISION. 153 

holding", in the matter of instruction, admonition 
and discipline, in the same manner as they should 
and would treat drunkenness, gaming, falsehood, 
bigamy, idolatry and the like ; and that whenever 
and wherever it shall appear that the missionaries 
and the churches, in the exercise of their appropri- 
ate liberty, do not do so, it will be the duty of this 
Board, in the exercise of its liberty, to dissolve far- 
ther connection with them." The amendment was 
rejected without farther discussion; and the original 
report, as is well known, was adopted by a unani- 
mous vote of the corporation, including seventy-five 
individuals there present, from every denomination 
represented in the Board, and of almost every shade 
of opinion in those various denominations. Some 
of those votes, it should be remembered, were given 
by men who have gloried in being abolitionists, 
who have co-operated in anti-slavery meetings and 
measures, and whose names have been — and are 
now — a tower of strength to the Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety. 

I now propose to show that the report, as it came 
from the Committee, and as it was adopted by the 
Board, does contain everything that was contained 
in those resolutions which, Mr. Webster assures us, 
would have satisfied, not only him as one of the 
memorialists, but ''all parties." The most conve- 
nient and conclusive method of doing this, is by put- 
ting the language of the resolutions and the language 
of the report, upon each of the four topics, side by 
side. 

The first topic is, slavery as a ^political system, and 
as introduced into the Cherokee and Choctaw nations* 



154 THE COLLISION. 

What do the resolutions say? What says the re- 
port 1 

Resolution. — '' Inasmuch as the system of domes- 
tic slavery, under every modification, is at war with 
the principles of Christianity, with natural justice, 
with industry and thrift, with habits of subjection tu 
law, and with whatever tends to the advancement 
of civilization and the ascendency of the gospel ; 
and inasmuch as it brings upon every community 
which establishes and upholds it, the righteous dis- 
pleasure of God, and the reprobation of the civilized 
and Christian world ; the existence of slavery in the 
Cherokee and Choctaw nations, is deeply to be la- 
mented by tlieir friends, and particularly by this 
Board, as having been for more than a quarter of a 
century engaged in labors tending to their moral, 
intellectual and social advancement." 

Report. — '' The Committee do not deem it neces- 
sary to discuss the general subject of slavery, as it 
exists in these United States, or to enlarge on the 
wickedness of the system, or on the disastrous moral 
and social influences v^hicXx slavery exerts upon the less 
enlightened and less civilized communities where 
the missionaries of this Board are laboring. On 
these points, there is probably, among the members 
of the Board and its friends, little difference of 
opinion." 

Again : ^'The unrighteousness of the princi'ples on 
which the whole system is based, and the violation of 
the rights of man^ the debasement, wickedness and 
misery it involves, and which, in fact, are witnessed to 
a greater or less extent wherever it exists, must call 
forth the hearty condemnation of all possessed of 



THE COLLISION. ;|^55 

Christian feeling and sense of right, and make its 
entire and speedy removal an object of earnest and 
prayerful desire to every true friend of God and 
man." 

Again: ^'Wherever the gospel is brought to bear 
upon the community where slavery or any other 
form of oppression exists, its spirit is decidedly ad- 
verse to such a state of things J' 

Again : ^'That slavery should exist at all in those 
tribes, (Cherokee and Choctaw,) who have suffered 
so severely from the violation of their own rights by 
their white neighbors, is deeply to be regretted ; and 
all should earnestly pray that as social improvement 
and Christian knowledge are rapidly advancing 
among them, they may speedily and nobly exem- 
plify the spirit of true philanthropy, as well as the 
gospel law of love, by showing that they duly ap- 
preciate the rights and welfare of the whole race of 
man." 

Further: "The Committee cannot advert to some 
of the laws enacted by both the Cherokees and 
Choctaws, without pain and regret, especially those 
which prohibit teaching slaves to read, throw im- 
pediments in the way of emancipation, restrict 
slaves in the possession of property, and embarrass 
the residence of free negroes among them." '' Sla- 
very was introduced among these Indians, and has 
been regulated by them, in unhappy imitation of 
their white neighbors in the adjacent States.'^ 

Once more: " Viewed in all its hearings ^ it is a 
TREMENDOUS EVIL. Its destructive influence is seen 
on the morals of the master and slave. It sweeps 
away those barriers which every civilized commu- 



156 THE COLLISION. 

nity has erected to protect the purity and chastity of 
the family relations,^' '' A great proportion of the 
red people who own slaves, neglect entirely to train 
their children to habits of industryy enterprise and 
economy^ so necessary in forming the character of 
the parent and the citizen. Slavery^ so far as it ex- 
tends, will ever present formidable obstacles to the right 
training of the rising generation,^ ^ 

So much for the agreement of the resolutions and 
the report on the subject matter of the first resolu- 
tion. The second topic is the distinction between 
the wrongfulness of slavery as a political institution, 
and the responsibility of the individual master for 
the existence of the relation between him and those 
whom that unnatural and unjust system has placed 
under him ; or, in other words, the distinction be- 
tween slavery as a system and slaveholding as a rela- 
tion constituted by that system ; and, as a corollary 
from this plain distinction, the denial of the Anti- 
Slavery Society^s dogma, which is held only by re- 
solutely blinking this distinction. How far do the 
resolutions and the report agree on this point. Let 
them speak. 

Resolution. — ^^ While the strongest language of 
reprobation is not too strong to be applied to the sys- 
tem of slavery, truth and justice require this Board 
to say that the mere relation of a master to one whom 
the constitution of society has made a slave, is not 
to be regarded as, in all cases, such a sin as to re- 
quire the exclusion of the master, without farther 
inquiry, from Christian ordinances." 

Report. — ^'Strongly as your committee are con- 
vinced of the wrongfulness and evil tendencies of 



THE COLLISION. I57 

slaveholding, and ardently as they desire its speedy 
and universal termination, still they cannot think 
that, in all cases, it involves individual guilt in such 
a manner, that every individual implicated in it can 
on Scriptural grounds be excluded from Christian 
fellowship. In the language of Dr. Chalmers, when 
treating on this point in a recent letter, the Com- 
mittee would say, ' Bistinction ought to he made be- 
tween the character of a system^ and the character of 
the persons whom circumstances have implicated there - 
loith^^ " &c. '' Slavery (says he) we hold to be a 
system chargeable with atrocities and evils often the 
most hideous and appalling whicli have either af- 
flicted or deformed our species ; j^et we must not say 
of every man born within its territory — \7ho by in- 
heritance is himself the owner of slaves — that unless 
he make the resolute sacrifice, and renounce his 
property in slaves, he is therefore not a Christian, 
and should be treated as an outcast from all the dis- 
tinctions and privileges of Christian society." 

If on tJiis point there is any difference between 
the resolutions and the report, it is that the latter is 
more anti-slavery than the former. The report some- 
times, like the Anti-Slavery Society, uses the word 
'' slaveholding" as synonomous with "slavery;" 
and it seems to take for granted the idea that the 
mere ownership of slaves always implies, in what- 
ever circumstances, some degree of criminality on the 
part of the owner, and is so much detracted from the 
evidence of his Christian character. In the language 
quoted from Dr. Chalmers, it seems to be implied 
that though the master of slaves may perad venture 
be a passably good man, notwithstanding that unfor - 
8 



J58 THE COLLISION. 

tunate relation, still if he were only a better man — 
if he had a little more of Christian principle— rhe 
Avould cease to stand in tliat relation ; whereas, my 
doctrine — though I confess that in that hastily drafted 
resolution, it is not so amply and distinctly stated as 
it should have been — reaches to the extent of admit- 
ting the possibility of a case in which the man's in- 
telligent and deliberate consenting to stand in the 
relation of a master to those whom the law has 
made his slaves, his holding and executing instead 
of renouncing, the trust which the State, under a bar- 
barous constitution of society, has put into his hands, 
shall be a brighter and more conclusive evidence of 
his disinterestedness and Christian integrity, than he, 
in those circumstances, could achieve by any act of 
manumission. 

The third topic is the denial of all tests of church 
communion which are not also tests of spiritual regen- 
eration. On this point, let the resolution speak, as 
before, and then the report. 

Resolution. — ^'The missionaries of the Board, 
everywhere, are expected to admit to Christian or- 
dinances, those^ and only those who give satisfactory 
evidence of having become new creatures in Christ. ^^ 

Report. — '' As the ordinances of baptism and the 
Lord's Supper are obviously designed by Christ to be 
means of grace for all ivho give credible evidence of 
repentance and faith in Him, these ordinances cannot 
scripturally and rightfully be denied to professed 
converts from among the heathen after they shall 
have given such evidence." 

Again : '^ On this principle of receiving to their 
churches all those, and only those, who give satisfac- 



THE COLLISION. 



159 



tory evidence of repentance and faitli in the Lord 
Jesus Christ, they [the missionaries] all appear to 
have proceeded.'^ 

The fourth topic is the proper application of church 
discipline in respect to slavery. On this subject the 
dictate of common sense is that the master who ex- 
ercises his legal power over his servants to do them 
wrong, is to be censured, not indeed for having the 
power to do wrong with legal impunity, but for the 
specific wrong-doing. 

Resolution, — '^The master who buys and sells hu- 
man beings, as merchandise, for gain ; who does 
not recognize, in respect to his servants, the divine 
sanctity of their relation as husbands and wives, and 
as parents and children; who permits them to live 
and die in ignorance of God and of God's Word ; who 
does not render to his servants that which is just and 
equal ; or who refuses to recognize, heartily and 
practically, their dignity and worth as reasonable 
and immortal beings, for whom Christ has died ; does 
not give satisfactory evidence of being born of God, 
or having the spirit of Christ." 

Report. — ^'Should any church member who has 
servants under him, be chargeable with cruelty^ in- 
justice or uNKiNDNESs towards them^ should he ne- 
glect what is essential to their present comfort or their 
eternal welfare; or should he in any manner trans- 
gress the particular instructions which the apostles 
give concerning the conduct of a master, he would 
be admonished by the church, and unless he should 
repent, he would be excommunicated,^^ 

Again: '^In respect to the kind and amount of 
instruction given by the missionaries, in relation to 



IQQ THE COLLISION. 

slavery and the duties of masters and slaves, the 
missionaries seem substantially to agree. Mr. By- 
ino-ton says, ^ We give such instructions to masters 
and servants as are contained in the epistles.' 'In 
private we converse about all the evils and dangers 
of slavery.' Of a similar tenor are the remarks of 
Mr. Wright. 'The instructions, public and private, 
direct and indirect, have been such as are found in 
the Bible.' " 

On this point, then, either the report is entirely 
unworthy of credit, as a representation of facts, or 
any master in a church under the care of our mis- 
sionaries, who should be convicted of any of the spe- 
cifications set down in the resolution, ''would be 
admonished by the church ; and unless he should 
repent, he would be excommunicated." And in the 
name of justice — nay, in the name of Christ, whose 
honor is so deeply implicated in this matter — I de- 
mand that the contrary shall not be asserted or as- 
sumed as the basis of argument against the mission- 
aries or the Board, without clear proof. 

If any man, then, shall venture to affirm that there 
are masters in our Cherokee and Choctaw churches, 
w4io buy and sell human beings, as merchandise, for 
gain — who do not recognize the divine sanctity of 
the relations of husbands and wives, parents and 
children, among their servants — who permit their 
servants to live and die in ignorance of God and of 
God's Word — who do not render to their servants 
that whicli is just and equal — or who refuse to re- 
cognize their dignity and worth as reasonable and 
immortal beings for whom Christ has died — I de- 
mand of that man that he shall identify the church 



THE COLLISION. 161 

and the offender ; that he shall, in the presence of 
that church convict that offender, not of sustaining 
the relation of a master, but of some of these specific 
Avrong-doings ; and that, having done this, he shall 
bring back a well-authenticated statement to show 
that the church, with the specifications distinctly 
proved, refused to censure the offender. If he will 
not, or cannot, do this, let him confess himself a ca- 
lumniator of God's people. 

At the risk of being tedious, I must ask two ques- 
tions, in view of the comparison which I have thus 
instituted between the resolutions presented by my- 
self and the report adopted by the Board. 

First, How was it possible for Mr. Phelps, with all 
his perspicacity, to say, as he says in the manifesto 
from which I made a quotation last week : 

" The anti-slavery sentiments expressed by such men as 
Messrs. Bacon, Hawes, Beecher, Stowe, Dwight, &c., are not to 
be taken as defining at all the actual position of the Board. They 
are the sentiments of individuals. They did not prevail in the 
Board. On the contrary, the Board distinctly rejected the reso- 
lutions of Dr. Bacon, \vhich were a summary expression of them. 
The Board, therefore, is no more to have the credit of them than 
it is to have the credit of the sentiments expressed by Dr. Ide and 
other abolitionists, and embodied in our amendments. It is no 
more to have the credit of them than the curse of what was ut- 
tered by the slaveholder, Elipha White, and his worthy compeer. 
Dr. Wisner. It is to have neither the credit, nor the curse of 
either, but must stand and be judged solely on what it did and 
what it refused to do — on the report adopted, and the amendments 
rejected." 

The Board did not '^distinctly reject" the resolu- 
tions proposed by me. In regard to those resolutions, 
the Board took no distinct vote, except the vote by 



162 THE COLLISION. 

which they were referred to a committee. The ques- 
tion of adopting or rejecting them was never put. 
The only amendment '^rejected," was Mr. Phelps' 
second amendment. So far as any ^'anti-slavery 
sentiments expressed by such men as Messrs. Bacon, 
Hawes, Beecher, Stowe, Dwight, &C.5" were 'sum- 
marily expressed' in my resolutions, they are all ex- 
pressed, as I have show^n, not indeed more summa- 
rily, but more fully, and with even more of a tech- 
nically anti-slavery tone, in the report adopted by 
the Board. I am far from imputing to Mr. Phelps 
any intentional misrepresentation. I only suppose, 
that in the singleness of his devotion to the cause of 
his society, he did not examine, so carefully as he 
should have examined, the facts that lay in the printed 
documents before him. 

Secondly, Is it not plain that those who would 
have been ''satisfied" with the adoption of the reso- 
lutions proposed by me, ought to be satisfied, if they 
are reasonable men, with the report as it stands? Is 
it not plain that, in lending their voices to a clamor 
against the Board, as if those resolutions contained 
something which the report, as adopted, does not con- 
tain, they will put themselves into a position in 
which they must appear very much like tools in the 
hands of other men ? Those men w^ho would have 
been thus "satisfied," will find a much better guide 
in their own instinctive connnon sense, and their 
love of substantial and practicable usefulness, than 
in the transcendental formula? of the Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety, or the movements of its Executive Committee. 



THE COLLISION. 163 



NO. III. 

WHAT HAS CHURCH GOVERNMENT TO DO WITH SLAVERY ? — 
WHAT IS SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES ? 

Immediately after the publication of the first of 
these articles, I received a friendly letter from Mr. 
Phelps, representing- that I omit all notice of what 
he deems an important qualification of his position. 
An extract from his letter, and a brief explanation 
of my views in regard to it, may serve as an intro- 
duction to what I propose to say on another part of 
the general subject: 

*' My position, then, allow me to say, is just this, that the mere 
fact of slaveholding, in the same way and in the same sense, as 
the mere fact of drunkenness, falsehood, or gaming, is (1) to 
constitute the ground and occasion for instruction, public or pri- 
vate, or both, against it ; (2) that such instruction resisted, and 
the thing persevered in, are to be the ground and occasion for 
admonition, or the commencement in some way of religious dis- 
cipline ; and (3) that instruction and admonition both resisted, 
and the thing still persevered in, are to constitute the ground and 
occasion for excommunication. This I hold to be the general 
rw/e, admitting possibly of exceptions, but of none save such as 
could be admitted in regard to the other cases named, and on the 
same proof or grounds as in respect to them. And this 1 hold 
not on the alone ground of the sinfulness of slaveholding in all 
cases (though I believe that), but on the broader, and what might 
be the common, ground of all parties, that it is justly, in this day, 
an occasion of reproach and an appearance of evil from which 
every follower of Christ is bound, at all hazards, to abstain — in 
other words, that if not sinful in itself, it is, to quote the Presb. 
Book of Discipline, something ' in the principles or practice' of a 
man, fitted to ' tempt others to sin, and mar their spiritual edifica- 
tion' — not, in a word, walking orderly. 



164 THE COLLISIOX. 

The point, however, to which I wish particularly to call your 
attention, is that of instruction and admonition previous to ex- 
communication — making the final excision not for the mere fact 
itself, hut for the fact persevered in against such instruction and 
admonition. In this view, the mere fact is not excision. It only 
raises the question of character and becomes the occasion and 
ground for instruction. It puts the man on the proof of his char- 
acter. That is all. If he can prove his case an exception to the 
general rule, very well ; then, just as in the other cases, let him 
stand in the church, not according to the rule, but a confessed, 
and everywhere understood, exception to it." 

Mr. Phelps assures me tliat he regards this '^ qua- 
lification of his position," for so he calls it, as " very 
important." But I must confess it does not strike 
me as affecting at all the position which he and the 
Anti-Slavery Society are understood to hold. If 
anybody had imputed to Mr. Phelps and his col- 
leagues an intention of •' exscinding" all slavehold- 
ers from the church, in violation of all the rules and 
forms of church discipline, as an accidental majority 
in the Presb3^terian Assembly of 1837 " exscinded" 
some 60,000 church members in Western New York 
and Northern Ohio — then this qttalification of his 
position would have been important. In reference 
to the actual question, the ^'qualification" is alto- 
gether irrelevant. The question is not whether the 
master of a slave shall have the privilege of being 
instructed and admonished, privately, and by the 
church, (according to Christ's precept, Matt, xviii. 
15-17,) before the final sentence of excommunica- 
tion ; but w^icther tlie admonition shall be for the 
mere fact that he sustains the relation of a master, 
or for the very different fact that in the exercise of 
the power v\4nch that relation confers upon him he 



THE COLLISION. 165 

has been guilty of some specific injustice toward the 
slave. Mr. Phelps' position is, that the relation it- 
self is the crime — that the man is to be admonished 
for having" the power to do wrong — that if, under 
admonition, he does not repent and ^' bring forth 
fruits meet for repentance," by immediately abdicat- 
ing that power " at all hazards ^^^ he is to be excom- 
municated. The only exceptions to this rule which 
he would admit, are such exceptions as w^ould be 
admitted in regard to drunkenness, falsehood and 
gaming. In other words, there is to be no exception ; 
for that Mr. Phelps can imagine a case in which a 
drunkard, a liar, or a gamester, who refuses to re- 
pent and reform after due instruction and admoni- 
tion, ought not to be excommunicated, is what my 
respect for him will not permit me to believe. 

To prevent any misunderstanding it seems proper 
to say expressly, that Mr. Phelps' letter was written 
with no view to publication, and w^ith no intention 
of engaging in a reply to these articles of mine. I 
have made this quotation — not without first asking 
and obtaining liis permission — because I knew not 
in what other way I could so properly render what 
he regards as justice to him. I have added the ex- 
planation of my own view^s because it seemed no 
more than justice to myself. 

Dismissing, tlien, this mutual explanation between 
Mr. Phelps and m3^self, I proceed to consider more 
distinctly the general question Avhich has come up 
between the Anti-Slavery Society and the Board of 
Missions, and which is urged as a practical question 
upon all the churches in the United States. What 
is the natural and legitimate action of Christianity 
8* 



IQQ THE COLLISION. 

against slavery ? What should he done on this suh- 
ject by the churches, administering and applying 
the principles of Christianity to determine the ques- 
tion of the visible Christian character of individuals 
claiming recognition of Christ's followers 1 In other 
words : What has church government to do with 
slavery ? 

Let us take this question as it actually arises in 
the United States. Let us look at " slavery as it is" 
in our own country, w4iere after all we have far 
more to do with it than we have to do with slavery 
in any other country. Tt may be presumed that 
when we have answered the question in relation to 
our ow^n country, so as to be sure that our answer 
rests upon the right principles^ it will be easy enough 
to answer the same question in regard to any other 
country. 

In fifteen of the twenty-eight States of this Union, 
there exists in the structure of society a certain ar- 
tificial relation between man and man, a relation of 
power on the one hand and of dependence and sub- 
jection on the other, which is the subject matter of 
our present inquiry. The population of those States 
is divided into two great classes, the free and the 
enslaved, with a smaller intermediate class whicli, 
under the established policy of most of those States, 
is rapidly diminishing. The free are those of un- 
mixed European blood, or of what passes for such. 
The enslaved are of another race ; the great majority 
being of pure African descent, and those of mixed 
blood being counted with their African kindred. A 
few of the enslaved race have acquired an imperfect 
and precarious freedom hedged in with various dis- 



THE COLLISION. 



167 



abilities, and they constitute an anomalous class be- 
tween the bond and the free. 

The theory of society in ail that portion of the 
Union, is that the state consists only of one class, 
the free ; and that the enslaved race have no rights, 
no being, as members of the body politic. The 
state is considered as having its existence in and for 
its white inhabitants only. Laws are enacted, 
magistrates are chosen, justice is administered, so- 
ciety itself exists, not with the remotest reference 
to the welfare of the negro as an end, but only for 
the protection and the interests of that part of the 
population which belongs to what naturalists call 
'^ the Caucasian variety'^ of the human species. If 
certain forms and degrees of cruelty are prohibited 
by the laws, it is not on the ground that the negro 
has any human rights, but only as '^ cruelty to ani- 
mals" is prohibited by the laws of every civilized 
community, because it is offensive to human sensi- 
bilities, and because it tends to brutalize the temper 
and manners of the people. The theory of society 
there regards the black population as in the state 
but not of it. The state does nothing for their im- 
provement or elevation ; it cares not for their morals ; 
it takes no^cognizance of any of their wants as hu- 
man beings. With the inconsiderable exception of 
the anomalous class of free blacks, it knows them 
only as property like other cattle. In the theory of 
society — in the laws — and generally in the admin- 
istration of law — they are regarded not at all as per- 
sons, but only as chattels. In Virginia, I believe, 
and perhaps under some other jurisdictions, the 
state does not even hang a negro for murdering his 



168 THE COLLISIOX. 

master, without first buying- him of the master's 
heirs, and so making him public property for that 
public use. 

Accordingly, the law, throughout those States, 
presumes every black man to be somebody's pro- 
perty, till his exemption from the rule is made out 
by positive evidence; just as elsewhere every horse, 
every cow, every pig is presumed to have an owner, 
and whoever pretends to be the owner is so unless 
another claimant appears with superior evidence of 
legal ownership. In most of those slave States, the 
most stringent regulations make it well nigh impos- 
sible for a slave to become a freeman ; and generally 
the free individuals of the enslaved race were made 
free long ago, before the present policy was fully 
established. If a master abdicates his power over 
his slave, the state concerns itself immediately to 
put that slave under another master, by requiring 
the sheriff to sell him sub hasta. 

In other words, the structure of society through- 
out that portion of the Union is such, that the state 
refuses to take the African population under its pro- 
tection or government. That entire moiety of the 
population the state regards not as citizens, nor 
even as its own subjects, but only as property be- 
longing to citizens. It insists that every black shall 
have a master, as his proprietor, and therefore his 
protector and governor ; it guaranties to the master 
all the physical force necessary to keep his slaves 
in subjection ; it allows him to inflict almost any 
punishment short of death at his own discretion ; it 
interferes between him and his slaves only to prevent 
certain extreme cruelties on the one hand, and on 



THE COLLISION. 169 

the other to foihid those acts of indulgence and 
beneficence which are considered inconsistent with 
the permanence and security of the system. For 
all that protection which every subject has a right 
to expect from the government that is set over him, 
and for nearly all that salutary control which it is 
the business of civil government to exert over the 
actions of its subjects, the black man must look not 
to the state, but to his master. The master upon 
his plantation is a petty monarch, with the powers 
of an African or Oriental despot ; the negroes upon 
his soil are his subjects. If he needs a military 
force to suppress an insurrection of his subjects, or 
to compel their obedience, the state comes to his 
aid. If one of his slaves commits some crime par- 
ticularly dangerous not to him only or tojiis planta- 
tion, but to the public considered as consisting of 
white men, the state takes the work of trial and 
punishment into its own hands. If his administra- 
tion of his power becomes in certain particulars too 
oppressive, or in certain particulars too lax and 
beneficent, the state counteracts that '^ evil exam- 
ple '' by the infliction of penalties upon him. If he 
abdicates his power, the state will commit that 
power to some other person. The state considers 
the blacks as a barbarous hostile population which 
it utterly refuses to take under its protection ; and 
it tolerates their existence within its boundaries 
only on the condition that all the most essential 
duties of government, in respect to them, shall be 
performed by individuals sustaining towards them 
the relation of proprietorship. 

Such is the system of society— the structure and 



170 THE COLLISION. 

arrangement of civil relations— which in fifteen of 
these United States is established under the name 
of slavery. The institution is entirely and essen- 
tially barbarous. No form of government on earth is 
more at war with every just conception of the nature 
of man and of liis rights as a member of society. 
All that I know of the ordinary operation of this 
form of government, in its influence on industry, on 
morals, on all the interests of the individual and of 
the commonwealth, is in harmony with its theory. 
And in proportion to the progress of civilization 
among the enslaved portion of society, the intrinsic 
wickedness of that mode of government becomes 
more glaringly evident, and more offensive to the 
moral sensibilities of mankind. The system of ar- 
rangements for the government of the negroes was 
established long ago, Avhen the ancestors of those 
negroes, captured in the ambushes and fights of 
hostile tribes on the banks of the Zaire and the 
Gambia, were introduced by crowded shiploads into 
dependent and feeble colonies under the relentless 
legislation of the mother country. In that age those 
arrangements might have seemed to be excused by 
the plea that there was no other way of dealing with 
savages so desperate, under the sense of recent en- 
slavement, and so ignorant even of the language of 
their masters; though even then they must have 
been condemned, by a thoughtful sense of justice, 
as inexcusable. But now the atrocity of those ar- 
rangements stands out in strong relief against the 
sky before the gazing world ; for now the negroes 
are as native to the soil as their masters ; and not- 
withstanding that tyrannical opposition to their im- 



THE COLLISION. 171 

provement and progress which is kept np by the 
state and generally by the individual masters, they 
are slowly but steadily rising towards a level with 
the superior race in all the essentials of civilization, 
and are already as unlike the barbarians that were 
brought from Africa, as the high-bred Virginian 
lady, than whom, perhaps, there lives no specimen of 
womanhood more admirable, is unlike her fair an- 
cestor, warranted ^' incorrupt,'^ who was sold to a 
planter husband some two hundred and thirty years 
ago, for one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco. 
The question before us is not whether the politi- 
cal system which puts the black population of the 
southern States into the power of individual mas- 
ters, absolute and irresponsible, and which studious- 
ly withholds from them all human rights, is con- 
sistent with the law of God. Nor is it the question 
whether the free people of those States, in their 
sovereignty, ought to enter at once upon the long- 
neglected work of reforming their barbarous institu- 
tions. Nor are we to inquire here respecting the 
duty of the slave — whether he owes any allegiance 
to the state which refuses to protect him or to re- 
cognize him as a man — whether in all circumstances 
he retains the right which our national legislation, 
our diplomacy, and our last war with Great Britain 
have challenged for all mankind, the right of expa- 
triating himself and renouncing his allegiance to the 
government under which he was born — whether, or 
in what circumstances, he may rise up with his 
brethren in bondage to throw off the yoke, to assert 
their freedom, and to form a new constitution. Nor 
have I any occasion here to answer the question 



172 THE COLLISION. 

whether I may rightfully give shelter, andfoodj and 
clothing to a fugitive from Virginia, and money to 
help him on his way to Jamaica or to Canada.* 
The only question is, What has Christianity to do 
with the reformation of this whole order of things, 
which is known by the name of slavery? And, in 
particular, what has Christianity, in the form of 
church government, to do in the business of setting 
right the wrongs of so wicked a system of social 
order ? 

One of the embarrassments incident to this mode 
of communicating with the public, is the necessity 
of breaking np a discussion of an important and 
complicated subject into weekly chapters, and thus 
separating parts that ought to be presented in close 



* An anonymous friend, who writes to me from New York, says, 
" At this moment, I am called upon to aid a poor fugitive with his wife 
and five children, who have escaped the were relation, having arrived 
from Virginia last evening. As this is a case of frequent occurrence, 
will Dr. Bacon please to indicate my duty in the next Evangelist 1" 

The proposer of this case of conscience is probably capable of seeing 
that his question has no bearing whatever on the subject of the present 
discussion. Yet, that I may not seem to treat even the writer of an 
anonymous letter with neglect, I will answer his question frankly. If 
a " fugitive with his wife and five children" were to come to me with 
the confession that he had run away from the mere relation of servitude, 
and not from any unkind, oppressive or unchristian treatment on the 
part of his master, and should ask mc to help him with money, I should 
probably esteem that fugitive a shiftless vagabond ; I should tell him 
that by his own showing he had no occasion to run away, and that if 
he had expressed a reasonable desiie to emigrate to some other coun- 
try, his master would doubtless have put him in the way of helping 
himself instead of depending on charity : and I should probably reserve 
my sympathy and my aid for those fugitives who run away from actual 
and specific oppression. And if I should find that the case of this fu- 
gitive from the mere relation of servitude is "a case of frequent occur- 
rence," I should think much better of the masters, and much worse of 
the slaves, than I now do. 



THE COLLISION. 173 ' 

connection with each other. But to this disadvan- 
tage I submit, for the sake of speaking to thousands 
at once. The further discussion of the question, 
this week, would make too long an article. I can 
only indicate, as with a word, the intended course 
of the discussion, asking the reader to wait patiently 
till he is sure he understands me. 

What has Christianity — what has the church to 
do with slavery? JVothing — and yet everything. 
In one sense — in one mode of action — nothing* In 
another sense, and by another kind of influence, 
everything. 



NO. IV. 

WHAT HAS CHURCH GOVERNMENT TO DO WITH SLAVERl^ 

The question respecting what Christianity, and 
particularly the Christian church, has to do with 
forms of civil government, and with those relations 
of man to man which exist in the structure of soci- 
ety — is, at the present day, at least as important as 
the question respecting what the state has to do with 
Christianity. What the state has to do w^ith the 
church, is pretty well understood in this country, 
and is in the way to be understood throughout the 
world. What the church has to do witli the state 
is not, in all quarters, so well understood. And yet, 
is it not self-evident that if, as we hold, the state is 
to let the church alone, the church on the other 
hand must let the state alone 1 The views which 
I have been led to entertain on this subject, are 



174 THE COLLISION. 

submitted to the public with diffidence, as my con- 
tribution to the discussion of a great and comprehen- 
sive question. 

Moses, as God's messenger to a chosen race, es- 
tabhshed, in the name of God, a system not of 
morals merely, nor of religion, but of political order 
and government. There is no religious institution 
in the Old Testament which is not also political. 
Lessons of morality, and of faitli and devotion, not 
only in the Pentateuch, but generally in the Scrip- 
tures of that dispensation, are given in the closest 
combination with national history and municipal 
regulations. The idea of a church distinct from the 
civil state is not in the Old Testament. Conse- 
quently, the system of the Old Testament was a 
system incapable of extension in the world. It 
was constructed for one nation only, and could not 
be imparted to another. It was designed not for 
man as man, but only for man as an Israelite in the 
land of Israel ; and he, of any other race, who would 
embrace the system and enjoy all its privileges, 
must renounce his country and nation and become 
an Israelite by adoption. The reasons of this di- 
vine arrangement would be an interesting subject 
of inquiry ; but the fact is all that concerns us at 
present. 

The Old Testament, then, is a political book ; as 
really so, though not as exclusively, as the Federal- 
ist, or Hallam's Constitutional History. Is the New 
Testament, in this respect, like the Old? Does the 
New Testament contain anything of the nature of 
civil regulation? Does it lay down any principle 
or rule with reference to political sul)jccts, such as 



THE COLLISION. I75 

tlie structure of the state, the liberty of tlie indi- 
vidual members of societ}^, the distribution of politi- 
cal powers, the responsibility of rulers to the peo- 
ple ; — or does it take all these things as it finds them, 
and leave them, as it leaves the physical sciences 
and arts, to take their chance with the general pro- 
gress of human improvement ? Did Christ set him- 
self up — was he announced by his apostles — as a 
legislator for society, and a reformer of political in- 
stitutions ? On the contrary, is it not one of the 
most wonderful of the divine wonders in the char- 
acter and history of our Saviour, that, pressed as he 
was on every side by the politicians of that day, 
Pharisees, Herodians, Sadducees ; by all the nation- 
al feelings and impulses of the Jewish peoj)le, and 
by the universally understood identity of politics 
and religion — he so carefully and skillfully avoided 
committing himself on any political question what- 
ever. Is not the same thing in the conduct of the 
apostles, and the primitive churches under their di- 
rection, almost equally wonderful ? Christ's king- 
dom, as announced by himself and his apostles, was 
not of this world. The church had nothing to do 
with the social or political relations of its members. 
It had no concern with any movement towards the 
re-organization of society. 

I do not suppose that I am propounding a novelty, 
or that what I am now saying is likely to be con- 
tradicted by any for Avhom I write. And yet I 
would have the reader dwell upon this peculiarity 
of Christianity and of the Christian church, till he 
shall see it with the same sense of its importance 
which has been impressed upon my mind. The 



176 THE COLLISION. 

New Testament shows us no Moses, standing before 
Pharaoh to demand the emancipation of an oppressed 
people — no Joshua, conquering a land of promise 
and dividing it among the conquerors — no Samuel, 
framing' new constitutions, and anointing kings in 
God's name. But it shows us Paul in chains, now 
reasoning with Felix, now answering before Nero ; 
and Jesus of Nazareth, at the bar of Pilate, testify- 
ing to the truth, and declaring, ^' My kingdom is not 
of tliis world." Had Pilate been converted, would 
Christ have required him to throw up his commis- 
sion of procurator of Judea? Had Nero been con- 
verted, would Paul, before admitting him to baptism, 
have required him to abdicate his imperial power, 
and to leave the nations of the Roman empire to 
constitute themselves, if they could, into a great fed- 
eral union of free republics ? 

The system of the New Testament is, therefore, 
capable of universal extension. It addresses itself 
not to sovereigns or states as such, prescribing to 
them new laws and political institutions, and sum- 
moning them to launch upon the sea of revolution, 
but to individuals, calling them to repentance. 
All that it demands of states and governments, as 
such, is toleration for itself — " freedom to worship 
God." Thus it goes out into all the world, preach- 
ing to every creature that will hear, commanding all 
men everywhere to repent, and leaving all political 
relations and institutions to adjust themselves as 
they may — and as under God's providence they must 
— to that altered state of things which exists wherev- 
er the gospel prevails. 

This is not only a distinction between Christiani- 



THE COLLISION. 177 

ty and the system of the Old Testament ; it is equal- 
1}^ a distinction between Christianity and all the 
schemes of human wisdom for the redemption of the 
world from misery. St. Simonism, Fourierism, So- 
cialism, and all other isms of that kind, propose the 
re-organization of society as their object ; for they 
regard all the evil that is in the world as the effect 
of bad S3^stems of government, bad laws, bad social 
arrangements ; and they, therefore, have no doubt 
that human nature will do well enough if it can be 
relieved from the pressure of disadvantageous cir- 
cumstances. Christianity bears no resemblance to 
these projects. It simply proposes to make men bet- 
ter — individual men — by inspiring them with new 
ideas and new principles of action, so that instead of 
being selfish they shall be benevolent, and instead 
of wronging and oppressing one another they shall 
recognize each other as brethren, and delight to do 
each other good ; and it leaves these new ideas and 
principles to work out their own effects upon the 
structure of society. 

Christianity, then, at the beginning, as announced 
by Christ himself and his apostles, had nothing to 
do in the way of interference with politics and le- 
gislation. It did not undertake to reform or change 
any man's condition as a member of society. And 
yet that gospel which we find in the sermon on the 
mount, in the Epistle to the Romans, in the story of 
the crucifixion, was destined, and was in one sense 
designed, to effect the greatest changes in the struc- 
ture of society throughout the world. In the ideas 
and principles proclaimed by Christ and his apos- 
tles, and put on record in the Scriptures of the New 



178 THE COLLISION. 

Testament, there came into the world a power, the 
progress of which from age to age, and from land to 
land, is the path of revolution. ^' Behold," saith 
God in reference to the diffusion and victories of 
the gospel — '^ Behold I make all things new." The 
kingdom which is not of this world was destined to 
change the world that knows it not ; as the changes 
of unconscious nature, the tides, the winds, the sea- 
sons with their bloom and their decay, are all effect- 
ed by influences that are not of earth, but radiate 
from other spheres. The propagation of those ideas 
which constitute the gospel, their progressive ascen- 
dency in the minds of men, their dominion over the 
public sentiment of nations and of the world, was 
to work out in the end the universal re-organization 
of society — the recognition of the brotherhood of all 
mankind as the only just basis of legislation — the 
abolition of all unrighteous laws and of all those in- 
stitutions founded on force and maintained by fraud, 
which withhold from labor its due recompense — the 
annihilation of all artificial restrictions upon indus- 
try and commerce — the breaking of every yoke of 
bondage — the subversion of every aristocracy and 
every throne. 

To some readers, all this may seem entirely aside 
from the subject in hand. I feel that the complete 
illustration and expansion of the suggestions I have 
been making would require a volume instead of a 
newspaper article ; and I can only hope that these 
views will fiad some further explanation as I pro- 
ceed. 

It is notorious that when the apostles went abroad 
through the Roman empire preaching the gospel 



THE COLLISION. I79 

and gathering converts into churches, slavery — 
that is, labor without wages, the bondage of the 
laborer to the employer, labor performed under the 
authority and power of a master — slavery involving 
the master's property in the servant — was every- 
where the ordinar}^ form of service. If that system 
of slavery, as a system recognized and regulated by 
law, was in some respects less atrocious than the 
system which exists in our southern States, it was in 
other respects more so. It was at once less atro- 
cious and more atrocious than the system with which 
w^e have to do, because the power of the individual 
master was more nearly absolute, the state not troub- 
ling itself to prevent either kindness or cruelty on 
his part. The master could emancipate his slaves 
if he pleased, and society did not refuse to receive 
them as freemen. Or, Avithout emancipating them, 
he could educate them to any extent to which either 
kindness or avarice might prompt him; and, when 
they were educated, he could turn their talents and 
acquirements to account in almost any employment. 
On the other hand, if he was disposed to be cruel, 
there was no severity which he might not practice 
towards those who, in the unpitying eye of Roman 
law, were to him just what the captive is, by the 
laws of savage war, to his Indian ca ;ior. The slave 
was liable to any torture upon any caprice of suspi- 
cion — liable to death in any form at his master's will, 
without even the allegation of a crime. And as to 
the numbers of the slaves, it is enough to remember 
that the poor could sell their children or themselves 
for bread — that kidnapped children and women, not 
negroes only, but of every language and complexion, 



ISO THE COLLISION. 

if carried to any considerable distance, could be sold 
with almost certain impunity — that every swoop of 
the imperial eagles, every plundered city, every con- 
quered province swelled the myriads of the en- 
slaved — that no triumph moved in glittering pomp 
from the Campus Martius to the Capitol, which did 
not glut the market with fresh herds of captives, ^i 
How did the apostles, and the churches under 
their personal instruction, conduct in respect to such 
a structure of society? Did they demand directly, 
everywhere, in God's name, the immediate and 
universal abolition of slavery? Did they exclude 
the master from communion simply for being a mas- 
ter? Was the relation of a master to a bond-ser- 
vant, without any consideration of the master's con- 
duct in that relation, counted and treated as a crime? 
I answer, without the least hesitation, J\'o. I have 
given some serious attention, at various times, to the 
arguments of those who try to answer. Yes ; but I 
must confess, that whatever ingenuity there may be 
in them, and whatever respect may be due to the 
good intentions of their authors, they produce no 
conviction on my mind. The evidence that there 
were both slaves and masters of slaves in the churches 
founded and directed by the apostles, cannot be got 
rid of without resorting to methods of interpretation 
which will get rid of anytliing. The violence put 
upon the sacred records by High Churchmen, or by 
Universalists, | does not exceed the violence with 
which these men, to whom 1 would impute no lack 
of reverence toward the Word of God, torture the 
Scriptures into saying that which the anti-slavery 
theory requires thejn to say. 



THE COLLISION. jgj 

How then (many an anti-slavery reader will be 
ready to ask) do I avoid the conclusion that the 
Bible warrants and sanctions slavery? How? — 
Simply by the all-sufficient consideration that the 
Bible, not being given to the world as a book of 
politics, and not undertaking at all to reform the 
world by prescribing forms of government, or by rec- 
tifying those political and civil relations which con- 
stitute the structure of society, seeks only to recon- 
cile men to God, illuminating them from on high, 
and inspiring them one by one with principles of 
righteousness and love, and leaves the whole matter 
of civil and social improvement to the common sense 
of men thus enlightened and renewed. The fact 
that the Bible does not contradict the vulgar astrono- 
my of the ages in which it was written, is impotent 
if urged against tlie demonstrations of Newton and 
Laplace. The fact that Jesus of Nazareth drafted 
no declaration of independence for Judea, is impo- 
tent as an argument against the self-evident truths 
of the American Revolution. The fact that Paul 
held no conventions, and uttered no protests, against 
the political system under ^which, in his days, the 
world was groaning, is impotent to prove that the 
Roman empire was not a system of outrage against 
right, and its history a history of inexpiable robbe- 
ries and slaughters. Even so the fact that Christ and 
his Apostles did nothing in the way of denunciation 
or direct interference to abolish the relation of master 
and slave, and to introduce the better system of free 
labor for wages in its stead, is equally impotent to 
prove that the enslaving of millions of human beings 
in these United States, and their conversion by law 
9 



132 THE COLLISION. 

into mere chattels, robbed — so far as the state can 
rob them— of every human right, is not an atrocity 
fouler than the wrongs of Pharaoh against Israel, 
and worthy to be — as it is — the scorn and indigna- 
tion of the Avorld. 

If it is the slaveholder who asks me how I avoid 
the conclusion that the Bible warrants and sanctifies 
slavery, I return the question to him. I put the in- 
quiry to Governor Hammond and his associates in 
the task of vindicating '^ the peculiar institutions" 
of the south — Do you believe that the Bible warrants 
and sanctions the slavery which exists in South Caro- 
lina 1 Does your belief in the Christian religion 
require you to believe that the system which con- 
stitutes one-half of your human population mere 
merchandise — chattels— things incapable of suffering 
any injustice — is right before God, and ought to es- 
cape all censure from the moral sense of Christen- 
dom 1 Why ? This is the only answer — Slavery 
existed in the Roman empire ; the apostles admitted 
masters of slaves to communion in their churches ; 
therefore slavery was right then ; therefore slavery 
is right now, right in principle and right in the de- 
tails ? Do you believe this, Mr. Hammond ? Then 
you believe that the slavery which the Apostles saw 
everywhere was right, for in this argument your be- 
lief that the slavery which now exists at Charleston 
is right, is only an inference from the righteousness 
of the slavery w^hich existed eighteen hundred years 
ago at Antioch and at Rome. You believe that 
Christianity gave its Divine authority to sanction a 
system by which all captives in war were slaves in 
the hands of the captors, and were sold after a vie- 



THE COLLISION. jgg 

tory like sheep in the market; — a system which en- 
slaved not negroes only but men of every complex- 
ion ; not savages only but men of the most civilized 
races — the Jew with all the glory of his history and 
his hopes, the Greek Avith all the beauty of Apollo 
in his face and form, as well as the painted Briton 
or the fair-haired Saxon ; not the degraded only, 
born and trained to drudgery, but the refined and 
cultivated, artists, poets, men of letters, as well as 
'' field hands" and '^ house servants." You believe 
that if Napoleon, when his armies were sweeping 
Europe, had brought back with him to Paris from 
each vanquished country, myriads of miserable cap- 
tives to be sold as so much plunder, and among those 
myriads high-born ladies prized for their deli- 
cate and graceful beauty, [nobles torn from their 
ancestral halls to be footmen on the carriages, and 
cup-bearers at the banquets of the victors, artists 
from the academies, and scholars from the universi- 
ties, as well as mechanics from the towns and labor- 
ers from the fields — that slaver}^ would have had its 
warrant from the precepts of the gospel of love.* To 
bring the argument nearer home — you believe that 
if, in the contingencies of another conflict w^ith Great 
Britain, your State should fall for a time into the 
power of the enemy, and the prisoners hurried to 
the ships from your cities and plantations, should be 
transported to London and sold there as you sell 



* This argument from the character of Roman slavery, and this par- 
ticular illustration, are presented with great force (if I remember aright 
what I read ten years ago) by Dr. Channing. I would have used his 
language rather than my own, if his little work on slavery had been, at 
the time of writing^ within my reach. 



134 THE COLLISION. 

negroes, yonr wives and daughters for seamstresses 
and chambermaids and children's nurses, your judges 
and senators for attorne3^s' clerks, your merchants 
and bankers for book-keepers and household ste\v- 
ards, your men of literature and science for private 
tutors, and your sporting gentlemen for grooms and 
dog-whippers — Christianity would warrant and sanc- 
tion the sale, and would rivet the chains forever upon 
the limbs of all your chivalry. No ! you do not be- 
lieve that the gospel of the Anointed One, who came 
to preach glad tidings to the poor, deliverance to the 
captive, and the opening of the prison doors to them 
that are bound, is the warrant of negro slavery ; 
and you deceive none but )^ourselves when you 
say so. 

But do I mean to say that the apostles, on the 
principle of not meddling with questions of a politi- 
cal nature, permitted men bearing the Christian 
name to treat their fellow-men as chattels, buying 
and selling them like cattle, and driving them like 
cattle with tbe whip? Do I hold that the apostles, 
and the churches under their teaching, recognized as 
believers and members of the body of Christ, men 
who arbitrarily and violently separated children from 
parents and wives from husbands, or who in any 
way disregarded the human rights of those whom 
the structure of society had placed as slaves under 
their control ? No ! — no ! — a thousand times, M ! 
Every passage of the New Testament which shows 
that there were slaves and masters in the churches 
of that age, and that the Apostles did not undertake 
to abolish the relation by authority, shows also that 
in that relation the master was to commit none of 



THE COLLISION. Ig5 

these acts of wickedness. If I had reason to think 
that what I am writing would find its way to the 
south, to any considerable extent, I w^ould go into 
the particular examination of the passages referred 
to. But I am writing for readers who, I am sure, 
will not challenge me to the proof when I say that 
in the primitive churches there was no more distinc- 
tion between the master and the slave, on account of 
that relation, than there is in one of our churches 
between the householder and bis hired man, or be- 
tw^een the master mechanic and his journeyman ; 
that a master who should be convicted of treating 
his slaves, converted or unconverted, otherwise than 
as the law of God requires every man to treat his 
neighbor, would meet with prompt rebuke and cen- 
sure ; and that the question in regard to a master's 
government and usage of his servants would be, not 
what does the law of slavery permit him to do, but 
what does the law of love plainly require him to do. 
This, then, I understand to have been the apos- 
tles' method of dealing with slavery. They sum- 
med up the ethics of Christianity in the law of love ; 
but many particular applications of that law were 
left, as of course they must be, to the common sense 
of individuals. The man who, professing to believe 
in Christ and to be governed by Christian principles, 
showed in his conduct that he was governed su- 
premely by selfish passions — whether the love of 
pleasure or the love of gain, the love of ease or the 
love of power — was disowned as not having the spi- 
rit of Christ. The rich man and the poor man, the 
master and the slave, w^ere tried by the same rule. 
No sumptuary laws were prescribed to limit the ex- 



186 THE COLLISION. 

penditures of the rich ; no tithing or per centum wvis 
levied on his income, in the name of charity, by rule ; 
how he should spend, and how he should give, it 
was for his discretion to determine ; but if his con- 
duct in these respects was such as to demonstrate a 
supremely selfish disposition, he was of course re- 
jected. It was not prescribed to the poor what stand 
they should take for the assertion of their political 
rights, what employments they should follow, or 
how many hours should be a day's work ; but if the 
poor attempted to throw themselves upon the church 
for support, and to live in idleness and as scandal- 
mongers, under pretence of devotion and religious 
zeal, the rule was, '' He that will not work, neither 
let him eat." The slave was not instructed nor 
stimulated to run away and try his capacity of self- 
government and self-support ; nor was he told that 
the gospel was his master's warrant for oppressing 
him ; but he was expected to act, even in his servi- 
tude, from Christian principles, glorifying God, and 
if his conduct toward his master, or toward any other 
person, betrayed the dominion of a selfish spirit, 
Christ and the church had no part in him. So the 
master was not required to begin his Christian pro- 
fession by dissolving the relation between himself 
and his slaves, renouncing his authority and tutel- 
age over them, and placing them out of his govern- 
ment and protection— though that was practicable 
under the Roman law ; hut if, retaining them under 
his power, he treated them as his cattle rather than 
as his fellow-men, immortal and responsible like 
himself, and like himself redeemed with the blood 
of Christ — if they were to him the mere instruments 



THE COLLISION. 137 

of his indolence, his luxury, or his gains — if he did 
not consider h\s power over them as a trust ratlier 
than a possession, commiUed to him, in the arrange- 
ments of Providence, for their present and eternal 
welfare rather than for his worldly weahh — if his 
conduct toward them indicated the ascendency of 
selfishness over conscience and love — then for those 
specific things, whatever they were, which were the 
indications of an unchristian character, he was liable 
to censure in the form of admonition and rebuke; 
and when admonition and rebuke were ineflfectual 
upon him, he became to the brotherhood '' as a 
heathen man and a publican." 

I give out no challenge. I have no expectation 
of being drawn into a vindication of my suggestions 
in these essays, against any unfavorable judgment. 
But I am confident that this representation of what 
the Apostolic Christianity had to do with slavery, 
is that which accounts for all the phenomena of the 
New Testament records on the subject, and is that 
which neither the defenders of slavery on the one 
hand, nor the asserters of the anti-slavery formula 
on the other, can set aside. In this view of the New 
Testament teachings, I think we have the key which, 
if rightly used, will unlock the difficulties of the 
subject. The example of the apostles is our safest 
guide in the administration of church government 
over the masters of slaves. 

Not to be misunderstood in any quarter, is more 
than I dare to hope for. Yet let me ask the impa- 
tient reader, ready to denounce me for daubing with 
untempered mortar, not to be too impatient, but to 
contain himself, if he can, till next week, and read 



188 THE COLLISION. 



NO. 



SHALL WE FOLLOW THE APOSTLF^S IN THEIR ADMINISTRATION OF 
CHURCH GOVERNMENT OR SHALL WE TRY TO DO BETTER ? 

It is plain to me that in some particulars the con- 
duct of the apostles respecting slavery, is not an ex- 
ample for us. Our political position, as citizens, 
authorizes us to act as the apostles did not act, and 
as they could not act consistently with common 
sense. They, as subjects of the Roman government, 
had no political power or responsibility ; and they 
acted accordingly. If we were situated as they were, 
it would be wise to do as they did. But we call our- 
selves freemen, in a free country. We may demand 
of our fellow-citizens, whose equals we are, and with 
whom we share in the sovereign power of the State 
in which we reside, such measures, Avithin the legiti- 
mate power of the State, as are suited to effect the 
peaceful abolition of slavery at the earliest practica- 
ble date. We may demand of the government of 
the United States, in which we have a voice as citi- 
zens of the Union, that in all its legislation, in all 
its diplomacy, and in all its judicial and administra- 
tive proceedings, so far as its legitimate powers ex- 
tend, man shall be recognized as man, w^ithout re- 
gard to his complexion. We may demand that 
where the jurisdiction of the United States is abso- 
lute and " exclusive," as in the District of Columbia, 
and in territories not yet organized with legislative 
bodies of their own, all those law^s which constitute 
the system of slavery, and by the force of which a 



THE COLLISION. Ig9 

portion of the population are made mere chattels in 
the possession of irresponsible masters, shall be swept 
away. We may demand that the custom-house 
shall recognize no human being as a piece of mer- 
chandise, and that no slave, as such, shall be entered 
upon the manifest of a ship's cargo. We may de- 
mand that all slaves passing forth, upon the high 
seas, with their masters' consent, beyond the juris- 
diction of the local laws that make them slaves, shall 
be free b}^ the laws of the Union, as they are free by 
the law of nations. And in a country like ours, 
where thought and speech are free, where every- 
thing may be brought to the ordeal of discussion, 
and where the deliberately formed opinions of the 
people, as shaped by free inquiry and debate, are 
sure to control, in time, the course of legislation and 
of government, we may address ourselves to the 
public in behalf of such an object, singly or in as- 
sociation, through the press or in the popular assem- 
bl}^, or in any way in which we can obtain a favor- 
able hearing. We, as American citizens in this nine- 
teenth century, have many things to do which the 
apostles, in their age, and in their position as sub- 
jects of the despotism by which the world was gov- 
erned, could not dream of doing. 

But some will ask. Is not the conduct of the apos- 
tles, in this respect, an example for ministers of the 
gospel, though not for men in other employments ? 
Undoubtedly, so far as ministers of the gospel are in 
political relations like those in which the apostles 
acted, they will do well to follow the example of the 
apostles. If a minister of the gospel is called to perform 
his ministry in a country where he is a mere subject, 
9* 



190 THE COLLISION. 

and not a citizen, and where he has no political rights 
or functions, it will be best for him not to meddle 
with political questions at all. But if he is a free 
citizen of a republic, and as such shares in the re- 
sponsibility of popular sovereignty, the example of 
the apostles in abstaining from questions of legislation 
and politics, is obviously no example for him. His 
duty as a citizen, and how it is modified by his duty 
as a minister of the gospel, he must ascertain for 
himself, by the light of general principles, in the ex- 
ercise of his own common sense. 

It is not to be supposed that the apostles, in their 
preacliing, meddled at all with any political question, 
or any point of legislation. We have no reason to 
think that their oral discourses differed in this re- 
spect from their epistles. They required of masters, 
not kindness merely, but — what is of far more sig- 
nific^ncy— justice, toward their servants.* They 
required of servants fidelity towards their masters. 
But in respect to the abolition of slavery, and in re- 
spect to measures and arrangements tending towards 
that end, they said notliing. Are we, therefore, who 
are now ministers of the gospel in the United States, 
bound to keep silence on the subject of slavery, save 
as we reiterate the teachings of the apostles on the 
relative duties of masters and slaves? I think not. 
We are American citizens ; and our hearers are 
American citizens. Not only do we stand in a dif- 
ferent position from that in which the apostles stood, 



* A man may be kind, as language is ordinarily used, toward his 
dog, or his horse ; he can he just only toward his fellow-men ; for just- 
ice implies rights. 



THE COLLISION. 19ji 

but our hearers live, as it were, in another universe 
from that in which the hearers of the apostles lived. 
Our hearers are men to whom is entrusted the wel-' 
fare of their country, and all coming generations ; 
their moral and intellectual character as affected by 
the ministration of the Word of God, is one element 
of the power that controls laws and institutions, and 
determines all questions of public policy. So far as 
political questions are at the same time moral — ques- 
tions of right and wrong, questions of the application 
of the law of love — so far it will be impossible for a 
free and faithful minister of Christ, rightly dividing 
the word of truth, entirely to avoid them. To keep 
such a question as that of slavery out of the pulpit, 
in such a country as this, must be impossible, as long 
as the pulpit is faithful to its trust in quickening the 
moral sensibilities, and in forming and guiding the 
moral judgments of those who sit under its influence. 
In a country where the question of war and peace, 
in a given emergency, is to be determined by the 
voices of the citizens, if the pulpit does not breathe 
into the minds of those who sit under it a just Chris- 
tian abhorrence of war as a means of settling inter- 
national disputes, the pulpit virtually defiles itself 
with blood. So in a country of free speech and 
thought, where millions of human beings are con- 
verted by law into chattels, and are treated as having 
no human rights, if the pulpit never, in any way, 
leads the hearers of the gospel to feel that, as citi- 
zens partaking in the sovereignty of the republic, 
they have something to do for the reformation of 
such injustice, it is so far recreant to the ends for 
which it exists ; it abandons a great moral question 



192 THE COLLISION. 

to be determined by the low influences of selfish par- 
tisan politics. The preaching is not worth much, 
which does not help men to understand and feel 
what God would have them do in all their moral re- 
lations. 

It is not necessary for me here to remark the limi- 
tations which a sound discretion imposes on the dis- 
cussion of such questions in the pulpit. The man 
who has not common sense enough to avoid, in the 
pulpit, the agitation of certain questions of mere 
policy, which the legitimate application of the law 
of love leaves undetermined — still more the man 
who has not common sense enough to avoid ques- 
tions merely personal, such as the merit or demerit 
of particular candidates for office — the man who 
makes his pulpit a place for repeating on the Lord's 
day, the substance of what he has been reading 
through the week in a partisan newspaper — the man 
who has a political hobby-horse which he rides in 
every sermon — will hardly learn much from any- 
thing that I can say to set him right. What I am 
insisting upon is not that ministers shall make them- 
selves leaders in the strifes of political partisanship 
— not that the people shall go to church on Sunday 
to learn which ticket they must vote on Monda)^ — 
but only that the absolute silence of the primitive 
preachers of the gospel, respecting the legislation 
and policy of the Roman empire, imposes no obliga- 
tion on their successors in the United States, at the 
present day, to maintain the same silence respecting 
the legislation and policy of this country. We are 
not bound to follow even the apostles, blindly, but 
only as we see the principles on which they acted, 



THE COLLISION. jqq 

and tlie application of those principles to our duties, 
in our relations. Cliristianity is not a religion of 
forms, or of merely specific regulations, but a religion 
of affections and of principles. 

How is it, then, in regard to the administration of 
church discipline ? Is the example of the apostles, 
in this respect, obligatory upon us 1 I answer. The 
principles upon which tlie apostles, and the churches 
under their personal direction, acted in respect to 
the admission and exclusion of individuals asking 
to be recognized as Christians, are principles which 
we cannot refuse to follow without rejecting the 
authority of the apostles. What are those princi- 
ples ? And in particular, what are the principles on 
which they acted in respect to the admission of mas- 
ters and slaves to membersliip in the church ? If 
they acted upon the principle that the mere relation 
of a master to his slaves, without considering his con- 
duct in that relation, is irreconcilable with a Chris- 
tian profession, and is therefore to be renounced '^ at 
all hazards ;" then we must adopt that principle and 
act accordingly, or else we must deny their authori- 
ty. If, on the other hand, they evidently rejected 
that principle — if they recognize masters of slaves as 
believers — if when insisting on the duties of a master 
toward his slaves they never insist on an immediate 
legal emancipation — then it is quite plain to me that 
the master of a slave, simply for being such, if that 
is all that can be alleged against him, ought not to 
be excluded from communion in our churches, unless 
we can do better than the apostles did. 

Can we, then, do better than they did 1 Setting 
aside their example, as not binding us to do likewise 



194 THE COLLISION. 

— admitting that, through ignorance or inadvertence, 
or under the pressure of peculiar circumstances, the 
apostles and the churches under their personal direc- 
tion may possibly have done that, in relation to sla- 
very, which we ought not to do — let us inquire for 
ourselves, whether there is any sufficient reason, on 
what we recognize as Christian principles, for ex- 
communicating every master of slaves, simply be- 
cause he is a master. 

At the risk of becoming wearisome by so much 
iteration, I must once more ask the reader not to 
misunderstand me, for I have the best reason to 
know that there are readers who have not yet ap- 
prehended the palpable distinction upon which I 
am insisting in all these articles. My doctrine is, 
that if the master of slaves refuses to recog-nize 
those slaves as his brethren of the human famil}^ — 
if he regards them and treats them not as his fellow- 
men, for whose welfare he is in God's providence 
responsible, but as his property merely, his chattels, 
which he has a right to use as he pleases — if he does 
not use his power over them conscientiously, as a 
trust committed to him for their good — he is to be 
rejected by the church, because he does not deal with 
his servants according to the spirit of the law of love, 
and the positive precepts of the New Testament. 
That my doctrine is sound, so far as it goes ; that 
the church has a right — nay, that it is bound to act 
upon my doctrine — is not in dispute. The question 
is whether the church has a right to go farther, and 
to demand of the master, under pain of excommu- 
nication, that he, shall ** at all hazards" dissolve 
the connection between himself and his slaves, shall 



THE COLLISION. I95 

divest himself of all power to govern or protect them, 
and shall leave them wholly and immediately to 
their own capacity of self-control, and to the tender 
mercies of a State that regards them as barbarians 
and as enemies. 

On this question, I hold the negative ; and the 
Anti-Slavery Society, as popularly and naturally 
understood, holds the affirmative. To put the ques- 
tion, and the reasons why I hold the negative, in a 
clear light, I will state not an extreme case, nor an 
imaginary one, but an actual instance of slavehold- 
ing. I have in my mind's eye a slaveholder whom, 
as I understand his character, no church has any 
right to exclude from its communion. There are 
obvious reasons why it should be improper for me 
to name liim, or identify him before the public in 
any such way as would make him a subject of dis- 
cussion in this part of the country or of jealousy 
among his neighbors. I know that such slaveholders 
as he are rare ; but I would hope that there are 
more than one ; and I trust that no individual will 
be designated, either here or at the south, as the 
only man between the Potomac and the Gulf of 
Mexico to whom my description can be applied. 

The gentlemam whom I have in view found him- 
self, on coming of age, the lord of a plantation, and 
the master of (we will say) a hundred slaves. The 
plantation was his birth-place and the scene of his 
childhood ; but he had been absent many years, as 
is often the case with southern young men sent to 
the north for an education ; and at the age of twen- 
ty-one he returned to his home to take the control of 
his property, with a mind enlarged by liberal studies, 



196 THE COLLISION. 

and with a heart quickened, I doubt not, by the 
grace of God. Thong-h a hereditary slaveholder, he 
inherited from his parents no passion for the vindi- 
cation and maintenance of slavery ; and his educa- 
tion in classical literature, his familiarity with history 
and with the lessons of political and moral science, 
his intercourse with liberal and enlightened men, 
and his personal observation of the effects of freedom 
upon the industr}^, intelligence and morals of the 
people, had inspired him with an intelligent and 
determined dislike of the system with which his birth 
had connected him. His mother and sisters had 
their rights in the estate when it came into his pos- 
session, but there was nothing in their views that 
was likely to embarrass him in any desire or attempt 
to do justice to the slaves. 

Great was the joy of the negroes at seeing their 
own master among them ; for they trusted that they 
were no longer to be under the control of adminis- 
trators, or agents, or '' hirelings whose own the sheep 
are not." Many were the greetings of old women 
who had borne him in their arms when he was an 
infant or had fanned him as he slept in his cradle — 
of old men who had been the confidential servants 
of his father long before '^ young master " was born, 
and of young men with whom he had played when 
they were little children together. But to him it 
was a day of sad and serious thought. What would 
God have him to do? — was the question. Had it 
been in his power to convert those slaves into a free 
peasantry, he would have done so, but that it was 
impossible for him to do. The State, in all the 
power which it had given him over those people, 



THE COLLISION. iQ'j 

had given him no power to confer such a blessing 
upon them. What, then, was he to do? He had 
dehberated in his thoughts on the plan of removing 
them to some northern State, or to Africa, that 
there they might be free. But, while he felt that in 
that way he could soon rid himself of a painful care 
and burthen, and while he knew that the sale of his 
lands without the slaves would enable him to live 
in easy circumstances at the north ; he was not 
convinced that the welfare of the slaves, or the wel- 
fare of the country, would be promoted on the 
whole, by such an arrangement. His conscientious 
conclusion was that the law of love — duty to those 
slaves— duty to his neighbors and their slaves— duty 
to his native State and to his country at large—re- 
quired him to accept the trust which in the provi- 
dence of God had been devolved upon him, and to 
fulfill that trust to the best of his ability. Accord- 
ingly he remains a slaveholder to this day. 

I have been upon that man's plantation, and have 
had various means and opportunities of becoming 
acquainted with the system on which he is acting, 
and with his views in pursuing that system. It 
might not be right for me, without his consent, to 
attempt a description of the system in its details ; 
and indeed my memory, unaided by any written 
document, might not be sufficiently exact for that 
purpose. A mere outline of the principles by which 
he is guided in performing Avhat he regards as his 
duty will be sufficient. The idea which lies at the 
basis of his conduct in respect to his slaves, is not 
the idea that they are his chattels, and that he may 
use them as a northern farmer uses his oxen, for his 



198 THE COLLISION. 

own ends without an}^ regard for tlieir welfare ; it is 
the contrary idea tliat they are liis fellow-men, de- 
pendent on him for all that protection and control' 
which a good government ought to exert over suh- 
jects so weak and helpless as they are. If the State 
would have permitted him to pay them wages for 
their work, and then to require them to provide their 
own supplies, I have no doubt he would have done 
so long ago. But not being able to do what he would 
he did the best that he conld. Each family on his 
plantation has its house, with a certain amount of 
suitable furniture; its little plot of ground to be cul- 
tivated by the members of the family for their own 
pleasure or profit ; its regular supplies of provisions, 
according to the number of the family ; its new suits 
of clothing, at stated intervals, for man, woman and 
child ; and its medicines and medical aid in sick- 
ness. In lieu of all that the free operative would 
pay for these accommodations out of his wages ; and 
in lieu of all militia service, and all town, county 
and State taxes, each slave — for to them the master 
stands in the place not only of landlord and employ- 
er, but of town, county and State government — per- 
forms a certain daily task amounting to something 
more than half a day's labor. The remainder of the 
day they employ at their own discretion in their gar- 
dens or their houses, or in a field whicli the men are 
permitted and encouraged to cultivate in common on 
the plan of a joint stock company. The products of 
all this portion of tlieir labor are their own— their 
'peculium ; and when they have anything to sell of 
their own raising, they have their choice to sell it to 
their master, if he wants it, or to send it to a neigh- 



THE COLLISION. I99 

boring market town. Their money, thus acquired, 
they expend for what they value as hixurics or com- 
forts, or they hoard it for some future use they know 
not what. Their master told me that if in any 
emergency he should want to borrow a thousand dol- 
lars, and should be sure of being able to repay it 
speedily, he had no doubt he could raise that amount 
upon his personal credit among his slaves. 

All the arrangements which I have mentioned 
were made, not in mere good nature towards the 
slaves, nor simply as the most economical system of 
management, but as part of a system of measures 
and influences for their improvement. There was 
much pains-taking by their master and by the ladies 
of the family, to inspire the people with the tastes 
and wants of civilization. There was a school for 
the children, where they had been taught to read, till 
some alarm in the country had compelled the teach- 
ers to confine themselves to other methods of instruc- 
tion. Every evening, at a stated hour, the people 
of the little village were assembled in a room which 
served as chapel, where their master read the Scrip- 
tures to them and led them in worship. Once every 
week, besides the Sabbath services in which the 
whites and blacks of several plantations were united, 
the pastor of the church in the neighborhood preach- 
ed to my friend's people in a style suited to their 
capacity ; and they were even then beginning to like 
his preaching better than the noisy rant they had 
been used to, because it was instructive, or because 
in their phrase, they could get hold of it better. Their 
labor was stimulated, as I have shown, not by the 
slavish incitement of fear, but by the manlike im- 



200 THE COLLISION. 

pulses of hope and gain. The obedience required of 
them was felt to be obedience to salutary laws rather 
than to despotic will. Punishment, of whatever kind 
or degree, was inflicted, not as the master's wrath 
because his interests were neglected, but as the exe- 
cution of law against what the conscience recognized 
as crime. Nor were crimes punished without the 
formality of a trial. And to develop and strengthen 
the sentiment of justice among the slaves some rudi- 
ments of trial by jury had been introduced into the 
administration of government over tliem. 

Enough has been said, perhaps, for my purpose, 
but I want the whole case fairly stated. It is to be 
acknowledged, then, that the people on my friend's 
plantation do not consider themselves free ; they are 
not free, they are slaves. The discipline on his 
plantation is not lax, but strict ; his people are in 
every respect orderly, and are obliged to be so. It is 
to be acknowledged, also, that he makes money out 
of the labor of his slaves — more than most masters 
make on the same soil, who treat their slaves like 
cattle — though much less, I doubt not, than the China 
merchants of New York make out of the labor of 
their seamen, and less than the manufacturers on 
the Naugatuc make out of the labor of their well-paid 
operatives, and less than he might make if he should 
sell them all, and invest the proceeds in stock of the 
proposed railway between New York and New Ha- 
ven. If it be asked whether he communes with his 
servants at the Lord's table, I am compelled to con- 
fess that he docs not, for the reason that he is a 
Presbyterian, and they being Baptists, will not admit 
him to communion. 



THE COLLISION. 



201 



Here, then, is a slaveholder — a voluntary slave- 
holder — one, who in the exercise of his free agency, 
accepts and sustains ''the relation of master to those 
whom the law makes slaves;" and the question is. 
Shall he be cut off from the church simply because 
he stands in this relation ? 

It may be argued that this man's policy is alto- 
gether mistaken — that by the kindness and justice 
of his administration, as a master, he is doing nothing 
for the anti-slavery cause, but is enabling such men 
as I am to 'apologize for slavery ' — that if he would 
embrace the doctrine of immediate emancipation, 
and make his slaves free by a formal act at all haz- 
ards, or if he would remove them to the north or 
west, and make them free in a land of strangers, he 
would do much more good than he is now doing — 
that if he were to treat his slaves w^ith the utmost 
cruelty, starving them into skeletons, scourging them 
to laceration, washing their stripes with aqua-fortis, 
hunting them out of their refuges with bloodhounds, 
he would be actually doing more than he is now 
doing to hasten the downfall of the system. I will 
not go into that argument, for it is not at all to the 
purpose. Admitting that the man errs in judgment, 
you cannot prove that he errs guiltily. Whether he 
is wise or unwise, he is, beyond dispute a believer in 
Christ ; he takes the Holy Scriptures for his rule of 
faith and practice ; the law of love is written on his 
heart by the spirit of God : whatsoever he would 
that men should do to him, he is doing even so to 
them. He has found these black "neighbors" who 
long ago, on the highways of this wicked and plun- 
dering world, had fallen among thieves, and had suf- 



202 THE COLLISION. 

feied divers grievous wrongs, and bad been left more 
than balf dead ; he is treating them with compassion, 
binding up their wounds, and pouring in oil and 
wine ; he is putting them upon his own beast, and 
taking them to the inn. You may denounce him as 
a Samaritan because he rejects your formula ; you 
may say that his treatment is not judicious, that his 
surgery is old-fashioned, and will never result in a 
cure ; that he ought to use your patent nostrums, your 
hydropathic bandages, your homeopathic powders, 
your 'magical pain extractor,' and that if you had 
the patients in hand, you would cure them all in 
half an hour. All this may be as you say, I will not 
dispute it ; but after all the man is a good Samari- 
tan ; he is neighbor to the poor negroes that had 
fallen among thieves ; and there is neither principle 
nor rule, in the New Testament, which authorizes 
any church to exclude him from communion. 

I need not deny that the cause of human liberty 
and of human happiness — the great cause of God in 
the world — would be more promoted, if the man of 
whom I am speaking should follow the example of a 
friend of his in the same county, who has removed 
his slaves to a free State, and has discharged him- 
self of all further responsibility in respect to them. 
But is this so plain and certain, so infallibly revealed, 
that the man who does not see it may be censured 
by the church, and excommunicated for not seeing 
itl Who has not known many an instance in 
which a patient, who might have recovered with 
competent medical attendance, has died before his 
time, because his friends had more confidence in 
some advertising quack than in a scientific and skill- 



THE COLLISION. 203 

ful physician ? Yet the church does not excommu- 
nicate such persons. Why not 7 Because, plain as 
the matter is to others, it is not plain to them ; and 
it is not the province of the church to settle such 
questions. The friends who called in the quack were 
honest in so doing ; they did it in pure love for the 
sufferer; they did it, praying for God's blessing; and 
though life was sacrificed, the church does not in- 
terpose with its censures. Questions of medical 
practice are not to be decided by the clergy, or by a 
church meeting. The Bible does not reveal God's 
will upon that subject. Clear as it may be to some of 
us that the policy which the man of v/hom I speak 
has adopted is erroneous, there is no infallible judge 
this side of Rome, to decide the question against his 
conscientious judgment. 

I say, then, charge upon the slaveholder some spe- 
cific crime, and prove it. Show that he treats his 
servants as mere property ; show that he does not 
respect or guard their domestic relations ; show that 
the chastity of their wives and daughters is not pro- 
tected under his government ; show that he keeps 
them in ignorance of God and of God's Word ; show 
that he permits them to steal, to quarrel, to break 
the Sabbath, so that they do not injure him ; show 
even that he runs in debt on the credit of what they 
would sell for if seized by the sheriff; and for any 
such thing he may be admonished by the church, 
and if he will not hear the church he may be ex- 
communicated. But where has Christ given the 
church authority to decide upon forms of govern- 
ment, to proscribe political institutions, to adjust the 
relations between rulers and subjects 1 



204 THE COLLISION. 

NO. VI. 

CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHURCH COUNTERACTING SLAVERY. HOW? 

Suppose the gospel to be preached for the first 
time in a civilized slave state — civilized in the same 
degree in which the slave States of this Union are 
civilized — civilization being carried as far as is com- 
patible with a structure of society so essentially bar- 
barous. Suppose tliat the gospel, as a revelation of 
God's character and moral government, of the way 
in Avhich sinners may be forgiven and saved, and 
of those divine truths by the sj^iritual perception of 
which the soul is renewed to holiness — is preached 
without any particular exposition of its bearings on 
the political institution of slavery, or even on the re- 
lative duties of masters and slaves. On tlie one 
hand, the consciences of the people have not been 
sophisticated with atrocious arguments in defence 
of slavery ; on the other hand, the intrinsic injustice 
of the institution and the mischiefs which it works 
upon the morals, the intelligence and the industry 
of the community, have never been pointed out to 
them. To that people the gospel is preached in its 
principles — " repentance toward God and faith to- 
ward our Lord Jesus Christ.^' The all-comprehend- 
ing law, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
all thy heart, and thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself," is clearly announced as God's law for the 
universe. The character of God, who ''hath made 
of one blood all nations of men," and who "now 
commands all men everywhere to repent, because he 
hath appointed a day in which he will judge the 



THE COLLISION. 2Q5 

world in righteousness " — is exhibited in all the illus- 
trations of its glory, which the gospel affords. Christ 
is " set forth evidently crucified," as '^ a propitiation 
for the sins of the whole world." It is proclaimed 
that '^ if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature," 
and that in Christ — in the bonds of allegiance and 
love to him, in the unity of communion with him — 
all the distinctions which divide men, whether dis- 
tinctions of race or language, of nation or condition, 
are merged, and all are on one footing. These prin- 
ciples, we will suppose, find audience ; and, by the 
grace of God, they enter into some hearts with a 
quickening power. How will they operate in re- 
spect to slavery 1 

The first effect of Christian principle on the mind 
of a master toward his slaves, is to make him recog- 
nize those slaves as his brethren of the human race, 
who, though they may not be his equals in the eye 
of the state, are his equals at the tribunal of God. 
Not only is that natural instinct strengthened and 
elevated, which prompts him to treat his servants 
kindly, as he Avould his dogs or his cattle, because 
they are his ; but he is made to feel that these ser- 
vants, placed under his power and protection, are, 
like himself, the subjects of God's government, ra- 
tional and responsible ; that like him they are made 
for immortality ; that like him, involved in the ruin 
of a common apostacy from God, they are tiie ob- 
jects of God's care and compassion, and of the re- 
deeming love of One who gave himself a ransom for 
all. He feels that in the sight of God he and the 
meanest of his slaves are equal — equally worthless 
as sinful creatures, equally precious as immortal 
10 



206 THE COLLISION. 

souls. He feels, within, the movement of the Spirit 
of God's love, writing upon his heart and breathing 
into his soul's life the law, " Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself." The first impulse upon his 
mind is that these poor people are his neighbors, and 
must be treated accordingly ; that he must do them 
good to the extent of his opportunities ; that he must 
by all means make them acquainted with God and 
with the way of salvation ; that the first of all his 
duties to his fellow-men, is his duty to these wronged 
and helpless creatures whose entire destiny, from 
this time onward, is so much within his power. Can 
he any longer treat these persons as things which, 
having no rights, can suffer no injustice? Can he 
treat them as merchandise, property, creatures made 
to be bouglit and sold 1 Can he leave them in tlie 
power of a mere hireling, a low and brutal overseer? 
Can he refuse to acknowledge and protect the do- 
mestic relations and affections which nature, too 
strong to be entirely subverted by oppression, has 
established among them ] Must he not begin to 
treat them in all respects as men having the com- 
mon rights of human nature? Must he not begin 
to treat them in all respects as men made in God's 
image, and redeemed from the wrath to come by 
Christ's atoning sacrifice ? I am not speaking of 
how a man may act, who has received Christianity 
as a dead tradition including a divine warrant for 
enslaving the "• cursed race of Ham." I am not 
speaking of how a man may act who knows the gos- 
pel only under the forms of a " hard-shell " Antino- 
mianisQi. I am not speaking of what a Christian 
man may do contrary to the principle of Christian 



THE COLLISION. 207 

love, through inadvertence or under the power of 
some special temptation. I only ask the reader to 
imagine for himself the spontaneous operation of the 
" new heart and new spirit " in a master of slaves ; 
and I say that to him thus renewed by the gospel, 
those slaves are no more things , inferior creatures, 
whom he may use for his own pleasure or gain with- 
out any regard to their welfare, but fellow-men who 
are of as much worth in the sight of God as he is, and 
whose welfare he is bound by God's law to value as 
if it were his own. 

Let us now extend our view somewhat. Instead 
of a solitary master receiving the gospel and acting 
under its impulses, without any aid or sympathy 
from other minds around him, we have — let us say 
— a dozen families living in habits of frequent ami- 
cable intercourse. Into each of these families, dis- 
persed to some extent among families of a very dif- 
ferent character, the gospel has entered with some- 
thing of its renewing power. These families con- 
stitute a Christian congregation. The heads of these 
families, sustaining similar relations to the enslaved 
peasantry on their several plantations, as well as to 
their several household circles, are under each 
other's influence ; and as fellow-believers, they are 
Avatching over each other " to incite to love and good 
works." In their conferences and consultations, 
their duties in the various relations of life come into 
discussion, and are made the subject matter of mu- 
tua exhortation, and among the rest, not last nor 
least, their duties as masters, individually and col- 
lectively. As Christian men, moved by the spirit 
of Christ, they talk with each other about those slaves 



208 THE COLLISION. 

of theirs, what shall be done for them ; and in all 
their debates the slaves, instead of being regarded, 
according to the theory of the laws, as inferior crea- 
tures, beings without rights, mere property to be use^ 
for the benefit of their owners, are regarded as men 
whom God made in his own image, for his own ser- 
vice, and for immortal blessedness, and whom Christ 
has redeemed. And in this way, the influence 
which the gospel has on each individual apart, to 
make him feel that the slave is his brother and must 
be treated accordingly, and to make him ask, ^' He 
that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how 
can he love God whom he hath not seen?" is 
strengthened by the association and Christian sym- 
pathies of the individuals with each other. Thus 
w^e begin to see some rudiments of the legitimate 
action of Christianity and the church against sla- 
very. Christianity and the cliurch recognize the 
slave as a man, an immortal spirit, a creature hav- 
ing rights, his master's equal before God. 

And as Christianity and the church extend them- 
selves, slaves too begin to experience the quickening 
power of the gospel. Here we have a new element. 
In the church, tlie slave is not only a brother by the 
tie of a common humanity, but a brother in Christ. 
The master and the servant share in thoughts and 
emotions, in experiences of infirmity and deliverance, 
in joys and hopes, which place them on one level. 
Both walking in faith and love, and breathing the 
same spirit of adoption, both are alike the servants 
of Christ and tiie freemen of the Lord. Consequent- 
ly a new feeling of respect and affection springs up 
in the mind of that master toward that servant. Nov 



THE COLLISION. 2Q9 

IS this all. As religions instruction is communicated 
to the slaves upon one plantation and another, and 
as the fashion of teaching slaves the truths and duties 
of Christianity spreads in the communitVj not only 
is there an effect upon those who experience the full 
power of the truth, but others partake in the move- 
ment. The servants of Christian masters first, and 
then to some extent the enslaved as a class, rise 
gradually, but steadily, in the scale of intellectual 
and moral being. And as they rise ; as they be- 
come more intelligent, more cultivated, more civil- 
ized ; as their higher human nature, in distinction 
from their merel}^ animal instincts, is developed ; 
their brotherhood in the human family is more dis- 
tinctly felt on all sides, and demands a more formal 
recognition. While this process of reformation in 
the ideas and sentiments of the people is going for- 
ward, the moment is steadily approaching in which 
the laws will chronicle the change, and will acknow- 
ledge the slave as a man, for whose welfare the State 
is bound to provide, and whose inalienable human 
rights the State is bound to protect. Whenever that 
moment arrives, a new order of things — which had 
been preparing itself as silently perhaps, and per- 
haps as unsuspectedl}^, as some great process of cre- 
ative nature — makes its appearance. The motion 
on the dial-plate was slow — nay, imperceptible to 
hasty and impatient eyes ; but meanwhile the unrest- 
ing pendulum within, and the weights and wheels, 
were doing their office unobserved. At last the clock 
strikes twelve ; midnight is past, and though dark- 
ness still lingers, the hours of a new day begin to be 
numbered. 



210 THE COLLISION. 

But such a result will not be attained, or at least 
will be indefinitely postponed, unless Christianity is 
dispensed and exhibited in the form of church disci- 
pline. A lax administration of church discipline, in 
respect to the conduct of masters towards their ser- 
vants, will accomplish, more speedily and effectually 
than can be done in any other way, the complete de- 
gradation of Christianity, and will especially and 
primarily counteract its legitimate operation against 
slavery. Let us observe, then, how church discipline 
will be administered in a slave State like that pre- 
sented in our hypothesis — a state in which the gos- 
pel has begun to be preached without an}^ pro-sla- 
very or anti-slavery commentary, and in which there 
have begun to be believers, both masters and ser- 
vants, who have received the gospel, not as a tradi- 
tion of dogmas and regulations, but as life in Christ 
and in the Spirit of God. The answer, I think, can- 
not be difficult to any man who understands what 
effect the gospel produces on a mind regenerated by 
its power. All will agree with me in affirming that 
the administration of church discipline, in the cir- 
cumstances represented by our hypothesis, will in- 
clude the following particulars. 

1. Members of the church, if they are masters of 
servants whom the law regards as property only, and 
whom the law therefore treats as having no personal 
rights, will not be allowed by the church to regard 
their serv^ants as the law regards them, or to treat 
them as the law treats tliem. The master who buys 
or sells his fellow-men for gain, or out of regard to 
his own convenience merely, will be admonished, 
and if he does not repent Avill be excommunicated ; 



THE COLLISION. 21J_ 

and the consideration that the law permits him to do 
so will no more be admitted as a justification, than 
the parallel fact that the law of New York refuses 
to recognize fornication or adultery as a crime, would 
be admitted as a reason why the church may not 
censure those who are guilty of such offences. The 
master who disposes of his servants just as he would 
dispose of any other property — giving- them away, 
hiring them out, or otherwise using them simply for 
his own ends, without regard to their wishes and 
interests — will be admonished like any other offender, 
and if admonition is ineffectual, will be excluded 
from the communion of the saints. The master 
who, because the law regards slaves as incapable of 
acquiring or possessing property, will not allow his 
servants to have anything which under his protection 
and government they can call their own, who per- 
mits them to have no time that is theirs, no earnings 
or savings that are theirs, and who treats them in 
no other way than as a humane man treats his cat- 
tle, Vv^ill be dealt with by the church as one who 
gives no evidence of being actuated by the spirit of 
Christ. 

2. The relation of master to servant, where ser- 
vants are slaves, is one whicli involves constant 
temptation to acts of passion and of injustice in the 
administration of power. For all such acts a mas- 
ter who professes to be a believer is accountable to 
the church. The master of a ship at sea is intrust- 
ed, necessarily, with a despotic power over the sail- 
ors. All men know how liable that power is to be 
misemployed, how many acts of cruelty are perpe- 
trated on shipboard, in passion or caprice, or by the 



212 THE COLLISION. 

deliberate abuses of the power committed to the mas- 
ter. All men know, too, that if a shipmaster is a 
member of a church, and there comes to that church 
the report of any such offence on his part, the matter 
will surely be investigated, and the offence, if proved, 
w^ill be visited with appropriate censure. Just so in 
a church which contains masters of slaves, and in 
which Christianity has not become a tradition cor- 
rupted by the expositions of such rabbis as Gov. 
Hammond, every instance of passion or injustice in 
the administration of the master's government, will 
be the subject-matter of church censure. The church 
will no more permit cruel or unjust punishments to 
be inflicted on slaves whose master is responsible to 
the church for whatever concerns his Christian char- 
acter, til an it would permit a passionate and cruel 
master to inflict the same punishments on hired ser- 
vants or apprentices. 

3. The church which goes to this extent in watch- 
ing over such members as sustain the relation of 
which we were speaking — and to this extent it must 
go if it does not utterly dishonor the name of Christ 
— will necessarily go farther. There are some ob- 
vious positive duties, which a master in fellowship 
with the church cannot be permitted to neglect. It 
is not enough for him to abstain from direct personal 
acts of cruelty and oppression ; the slaves have a right 
to look to him for the blessings of good government 
and protection, so far as it is in his power to dispense 
such blessings ; they have a right to look to him, for 
they can look nowhere else. The first of all their 
rights as human beings living in society, a right 
which transcends even their right to personal liberty, 



THE COLLISION. 213 

is their right to he governed, and well governed, 
and to have all that protection from their own evil 
propensities, and from the evil propensities of other 
men, which good government affords. He can 
hardly be guilty of a greater wrong against them, 
than that which he commits, if through any neglect 
of his, they are not protected as men and governed 
as men. If, then, he fails to place them under such 
a system of regulations as is suited to promote their 
individual and social well-being — if he does not care 
for and protect their persons, their little possessions 
and their morals— if he neglects to guard, as a ma- 
gistrate, the chastity of females, or to uphold the 
sanctity and permanence of the marriage tie — if he 
neglects to restrain them from petty larcenies against 
each other, and from quarrels and fightings — if he 
allows or connives at drunkenness and rumselling 
among them — if he does not require them to keep 
the Sabbath by resting from unsuitable occupations 
— his brethren in the church will not fail to admon- 
ish him, and when admonition has been found inef- 
fectual, they will disown him. 

4. Nor will this be all. The relation which he 
sustains to his servants, as being to them in the place 
of the State, involves only a part of his positive du- 
ties towards them. As a Christian man looking upon 
the ignorance and debasement of these his depend- 
ent neighbors, he is bound to care for their entire 
welfare as spiritual and immortal beings. He is 
bound — and by all the movements of the Spirit of 
Christ within him he is impelled — to provide instruc- 
tion for them, and especially to make them ac- 
quainted with God and with the way of salvation 
10* 



214 THE COLLISION. 

through Christ. If he neglects this duty, if his ser- 
vants are permitted to live and die in heathenish ig- 
norance, if he does not labor in the spirit of self-de- 
nying love to win them to God, and to train them 
for God's service and for immortal blessedness, the 
church will strive to bring him to a sense of his du- 
ty, and thiding him incorrigible, will declare that he 
has not the spirit of Christ and is none of his. 

Such being the administration of church discipline 
in the community vvljich we have supposed, it is evi- 
dent that there the slaves of '' believing masters" 
will be treated, and their masters will be required by 
the church to treat them, in effect, as if they were 
hired servants, or apprentices, under the protection 
of law. How obvious is it that such an administra- 
tion of Christianity will tell, gradually perhaps, but 
infallibly, on the entire character of that community, 
quickening and guiding the moral sense of the whole 
people. How obvious that in that community the 
human sentiment which recognizes the slave as a 
man, and which acknowledges his human rights — 
the sentiment which when it comes to assert itself 
through the forms of legislation, will speedily work 
out the abolition of slavery — cannot but be making 
piogress. How obvious that in that community not 
only the slaves of '' believing masters," but the 
whole of the enslaved population, Avill be continual- 
ly and irresistibly rising in tlieir intellectual and 
moral character, and commanding more and more 
of the respect of the ruling class. How obvious that 
Christianity, thus administered, will spread itself in 
that community, and will act with a power continu- 
ally increasing, till every fetter is brokeH, and the 



THE COLLISION. 215 

soil, no longer exhausted by the curse of slavery, 
shall brighten into beauty like Eden, and shall give 
up its riches freely, to fill the hands of free and hap- 
py industry. Where Christianity is clearly and faith- 
fully preached as the law of the spirit of life in Jesus 
Christ, and where it is administered in the form of 
a legitimate and fraternal church discipline, slavery 
must be a transient institution, for slavery belongs 
entirely to that order of things which the ascendency 
of Christianity annihilates. Christianity civilizes, 
all its tendencies are towards the highest possible 
forms of social order and improvement : slavery is 
essentially barbarous. Christianity humanizes, it 
develops the faculties and affections of true manhood 
in every individual whom it reaches : slavery brutal- 
izes. The genius of Christianity is love and good 
will : the genius of slavery is violence and fear. 
Christianity makes all men equal in God's regard, 
equal before the dread bar of justice, equal at the 
cross, equal at the throne of grace, equal in the 
church : slavery abhors the idea that every man is, 
in respect to rights, the equed of his fellow-man ; it 
rejects the law of thought which makes justice and 
equity (or equalness) convertible terms in every hu- 
man language. Christianity is light, it quickens 
every mind into intelligence, it pours upon all souls 
an illumination from the skies : slavery is of the 
darkness, it hates and dreads the light, it seals up 
the souls of men in ignorance, it gathers around itself 
night deep and murky, for darkness is its element. 
Christianity and slavery, wherever they co-exist, 
must needs be like the Ormuzd and Ahriman of the 
Persian mythology — the opposite principles of light 



216 THE COLLISION. 

and darkness — forever contending each to subdue the 
other. If Christianity continues to hokl forth its 
hght, in that h'ght slavery must decay and perish. 
If Christianity yields, obscures its light, and enters 
into a confederacy with darkness, it decays and dies 
in the chains of its captivit}^ 

I dare not ask for another column in this week's 
paperj and therefore, though I am anxious to bring 
the discussion to a close on my part, I must post- 
pone the application which I intend to make of 
these remarks, till I can have another hearing. 
Meanwhile it will not have escaped the reader's 
notice, that though I commenced with a review of 
the action taken by the Board of Foreign Missions, 
and though the general title with which I began has 
been retained for the sake of marking the continuity 
of the series, I have in view not merely the specific 
missionary question touching the Cherokee and 
Choctaw churches, but that more comprehensive 
and momentous ecclesiastical question, with refer- 
ence to which the debates at Brooklyn were con- 
ducted. The time has come, when the ministers of 
the gospel and the professed followers of Christ, in- 
dividually and in their various ecclesiastical assem- 
blies, are called to inquire calmly yet earnestly, whe- 
ther the churches in the slaveholding States, with 
which they are respectively in communion and cor- 
respondence, are really acting in conformity with 
Christian principle towards such of their members as 
are owners of slaves. The reports are such concern- 
ing the administration of discipline on this subject in 
the southern churches — the extent to which those re- 
ports have gained belief throughout the Christian 



THE COLLISION. 2_[7 

world is such — that, in the absence of any authentic 
denial of their truth on the part of those churches, 
the question, What ought we to do in this ^natter ? 
must come up in all the ecclesiastical bodies with 
which those churches are in correspondence. It is 
well known what arrangements are in progress to 
urge this question effectually upon the notice of the 
Triennial Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, now 
soon to meet. It is equally well known that the 
same question will be introduced again — as it has 
been heretofore under one form and another — in 
those Congregational bodies of New England which 
are in correspondence with the two divisions of the 
Presbyterian Church. This question ought not to 
be evaded or postponed ; nor can it be much longer. 
Those who have favored me with letters, anony- 
mously or otherwise, proposing particular points for 
my consideration, will probably find their inquiries 
answered, either formally or informally, before I 
close. Every communication which in any way 
helps me to know how far I am understood or mis- 
understood, is thankfully accepted, though it may 
not be in my power to make any other than this 
general acknowledgment. 



NO. VII. 

DUTY OF THE CHURCHES IN THE FREE STATES. 

The idea of communion among Christian church- 
es, or between confederacies of churches, implies 
some degree of responsibility in regard to the main- 
tenance of church discipline. Much more is this 



218 THE COLLISION. 

implied, where communion takes ilie form of a set- 
tled correspondence and regulated intercourse. Such 
mutual responsibility, necessary as the basis of mu- 
tual recognition, is not inconsistent with mutual 
independence and mutual equality of powers. In 
the language of the Cambridge Platform, (ch. xv. 
§2,) illustrating this principle, ''Paul had no author- 
ity over Peter, yet when he saw Peter not walking 
with a right foot, he publicly rebuked him before 
the church. Though churches have no more au- 
thority one over another than one Apostle had over 
another, yet as one Apostle might admonish another, 
so may one church admonish another, and yet with- 
out usurpation." I quote this not as " authority," 
but as good common sense well expressed. 

I need not, then, spend any time in showing that 
the churches in the free States have a right to con- 
cern themselves with the manner in which discipline 
is administered, or not administered, in the Southern 
churches. The only questions are, whether there is 
In existing facts an occasion for the exercise of this 
right ; and if so, in what form and by what pro- 
cedure shall the right be exercised 1 

To the first of these questions, the existing facts 
are a sufficient answer. A " common fame" has 
spread through this land, and has been sounded out 
to the ends of the world, which charges upon the 
southern churches, indiscriminately, a scandalous 
neglect of Christian discipline. It is charged upon 
those churches that members in full communion, 
office-bearers, ministers, commit, uncensured, and 
habitually, crimes which cause the name of Christ 
to be blasphemed. It is charged upon them that 



THE COLLlSIOi\, 



219 



communicants, elders, pastors, preachers of what 
pretends to be Christianity, are tolerated in treating 
their servants, whom barbarous Laws have put into 
their power, as mere property, to be bought and sold 
for gain, or at the convenience or caprice of the 
buyer and seller. It is charged that masters in 
the communion of those churches are tolerated in 
governing their servants and dealing with them, not 
as human beings having human rights, but as cattle 
driven to their labor with the whip, moved by no 
human impulse to industry, and having no more in- 
terest in their own labor than the muzzled ox '' that 
treadeth out the corn." It is charged that the ser- 
vants of such masters live and die without the know- 
ledge of God's illuminating and quickening Word > 
with no advantages or means for the development 
of their nature as intelligent beings created in God's 
image; borne down under an oppression heavier, in 
this most vital respect, than that which degrades the 
subjects of Russian or Austrian despotism, more 
unchristian than even that which keeps down the 
slaves of Antichrist himself within the immediate 
civil jurisdiction of Rome. It is charged that ser- 
vants of such masters, when their masters might 
protect them, are robbed of God's primeval institu- 
tion of marriage; that instead of being permitted to 
live together, husband and wife, in a relation which 
can be dissolved only by death, or by crime on their 
part, they live, male and female, in a temporary pair- 
ing unsanctioned by religion, unprotected by powder, 
and liable to be dissolved at the convenience of the 
master. It is charged that the chastity of female 
servants, under such masters, has no protection 



220 THE COLLISION. 

against the frauds or the violence of licentiousness. 
It is charged that hy the authority of such masters, 
children are torn from the fathers and mothers to 
whom God gave them, and are sold as merchandise. 
I do not make these charges against the southern 
churches ; nor do I take it for granted that these 
charges are all true. What I say is, that these charges 
are uttered by "common fame" — are believed 
by millions — are carried abroad to the farthest out- 
posts of civilization in every quarter of the world — 
have never been disproved — have never been met 
by those churches with anything like an adequate 
and authentic denial. 

In the existence of such facts there is, beyond con- 
troversy, an imperative occasion for the exercise of 
that right of inquiry and admonition on the part of 
other churches, which is inseparable from the idea 
of communion. If these charges, so widely pub- 
lished, and so widely believed, are not a sufficient 
reason for putting the churches of the slaveholding 
States upon their defence, nothing can be. The im- 
putations against their Christianity are not less seri- 
ous than if they were charged with tolerating in 
their communion the rationalism of Germany, the 
fooleries of Oxford, and the impostures of Rome and 
of Nauvoo. In some way they should be sum- 
moned, as churches, to answer for themselves 
whether these things are so. And if they refuse to 
meet the inquiry, or fail to vindicate themselves ; or 
if, admitting that the matters of fact alleged against 
them are true, they do not repent under admonition, 
then the communion between those churches and 
the churches of the north and of the west must end. 



THE COLLISION. ^21 

The light of every northern ecclesiastical body to with- 
draw communion, in such a case, from the southern 
churches, would be too manifest to be questioned. 

In what form, then, and by what course of pro- 
cedure, may this right of inquiry and of ultimate 
non-communion be most advantageously exercised? 
On this point, it will be sufficient to advert to tlie 
established relations and formal correspondence be- 
tween the southern churches of various denomina 
tions, and those churches in the free States with 
which they agree in the forms of doctrine and of 
worship. 

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian church 
exercises, by the terms of its constitution, a general 
superintendence over all the affiliated synods, pres- 
byteries and congregations. Every subordinate 
judicatory is responsible to the assembled represen- 
tatives of the whole communion, for all its errors or 
deficiencies in respect to the administration of dis- 
cipline, and is, accordingly, liable to be admonished 
or instructed by the General Assembly. Such being 
the fact, can there be any doubt as to what the 
General Assenjbly — whether Annual or Triennial 
— can do, and ought to do, in reference to the ^fama 
clamosa^ of which I have spoken 1 Let the Gene- 
ral Assembly take notice of this ' crying fame' which 
so dishonors, not only the Presbyterian church as a 
great confederacy of Christian congregations, but 
also the name of Christ himself; and by that su- 
preme judicatory let it be enjoined on all presbyte- 
ries and church sessions, to inquire whether any of 
the ministers or members under their care are guilty 
of the sins thus charged • upon the Presbyterian 



222 THE COLLISION. 

church, to visit such offenders with due censure 
wherever they may be found, and to report liere- 
after, at each General Assembly, whether such 
crimes are indeed tolerated or winked at within their 
respective jurisdictions. It is in the power of each 
synod in the free States, nay, of each presbytery or 
church session, to address the General Assembly 
with reference to so great a scandal, and to demand 
some decisive action for the removal of the reproach. 
The Congregational bodies in New England, and 
in the other northern States, have no cliurches in 
the slaveholding States, and therefore are not 
directly implicated in these charges. Yet their 
ecclesiastical intercourse with the Presbyterians of 
the south is so intimate, that it could hardly be 
more so if the two denominations Vv'ere fused into 
one. Church members and ministers pass from one 
communion to the other continually, as easily as 
they pass from one part of the country to another. 
As far as New England is concerned, the various 
Congregational organizations maintain communion 
with each of the two great divisions of the Presb)^- 
terian church by an interchange of delegates. Thus 
the Congregational body in each of these five States 
has a stipulated right to speak to tlie General 
Assembly in the same way in which one Congre- 
gational church, according to the Cambridge Plat- 
form, may speak to another. If then, at the 
approaching sessions of the General Assembly, that 
body — either of the two bodies bearing that name 
— shall neglect to take some efficient measures for 
the removal of the great scandal, which for some 
twenty years has been continually growing, till it 



THE COLLISION. 223 

has become offensive to the moral sense of Chris- 
tendom, it will remain for the New England Con- 
gregational Associations and Conventions, at their 
meetings immediately following, to take np tlie 
subject, and separately or jointly to expostulate with 
the General Assembly on its unchristian neglect of 
Christian discipline. Then, if at the end of another 
year such admonition shall not have been duly 
noticed — if the scandal remains untouched by the 
judicatory immediately responsible for it to the 
Christian world — if the one Assembly shall have 
been too much occupied with the scandal of young 
people's dancing, to attend to such a scandal as this 
— if the other Assembly shall have been so engrossed 
with the question whether the Rev. Mr. McQueen 
shall or shall not violate the law of North Carolina 
by putting away his wife, that it can do nothing 
towards refuting or removing the imputation which 
makes it responsible for innumerable acts of oppres- 
sion — it will be for these Congregational bodies to 
take another step, and by a solemn act and declara- 
tion before the world, to dissolve all the existing 
relations of intercourse and correspondence with the 
General Assembly — which ever it may be— that has 
proved recreant. From that time forward, the way 
will be plain for every Congregational church in 
New England, to withhold all acts of communion 
from every southern church which does not dis- 
tinctly clear itself from this scandal. 

If, on the other hand, the General Assembly, or 
rather the two Assemblies, should take decisive 
measures in relation to the scandal of which I am 
speaking — if orders should go down from Philadelphia 



224 THE COLLISION. 

next May, requiring all tlie presbyteries and church 
sessions south of Pennsylvania to take notice of 
certain specifications alleged by common fame 
against their administration of church discipline, 
and enjoining upon them an immediate and un- 
shrinking attention to every instance in which a 
master does not render to his servants strictly, so far 
as his power over them extends, that which is just 
and equal — what would the result be in relation to 
those churches'? Of course, it is impossible to 
foretell. The worst that could happen would be the 
immediate withdrawal of those presbyteries and 
congregations from all connection with the Presby- 
terian body. And if that event should come to pass, 
from such a cause^ few would regret it ; for such 
action on the part of those churches, in such circum- 
stances, would be an unqestionable demonstration 
that the common fame of which I have spoken is 
true — too true to bear investigation. And what 
branch, I will not say of the Presbyterian church, 
but of the universal church of Christ, is that which 
would desire to retain in its connection congregations 
so defiled with the guilt of inhuman oppression, 
and so obstinately and passionately resolved upon 
cleaving to that iniquity? My own belief is that 
this would not be the result ; that in certain districts 
of the south, the churches would rejoice in such 
an opportunity of defending themselves against the 
imputations under which they suffer; that in those 
churches the administration of discipline would be 
greatly invigorated ; that on the other hand, such 
churches as proved contumacious, would be dis- 
graced even in their own consciences and in the 



THE COLLISION. 225 

e3'es of oppressors around them, and if not utterly 
abandoned to delusion and sin, would presently 
begin to reform themselves ; and that the legitimate 
living power of Christianity and the church to 
counteract slavery, and to effect its abolition by 
effecting a change in the sentiments and habits of 
society, would soon begin to be manifested through- 
out the south. In this way I should expect to see 
the principle introduced into the southern churches 
and gradually propagated there, that the holding of 
a slave is prima facie evidence of wrong-doing, that 
it creates some presumption of guilt on the part 
of the master, and puts upon him the burthen of 
showing that he is actually loving mercy, doing 
justly, and walking humbly before God. This 
principle has been proposed and urged more than 
once, with great power, by Dr. Robert J, Breckin- 
ridge. If he will carry this principle through, and 
cause it to become law in the synod of his native 
State, sit mihi magnus Apollo, Thenceforth let all 
that he has said and done against New England be 
forgotten. 

It remains to show what I regard as the advan- 
tages of this course of procedure, over that which is 
commonly understood to be proposed by the Anti- 
Slavery Society. The proposal of the Anti-Slavery 
Society, as language is ordinarily understood, is that 
slaveholding itself — the simple relation of a master 
to those whom the law of the State regards and treats 
as slaves — shall be the subject matter of admonition, 
and then, if not abandoned, of excommunication. 
Our proposal, on the other hand, is that the exercise 
of a despotic power, in any specific form of injustice 



226 THE COLLISION. 

or oppression, shall be the subject matter of censure. 
Our proposal admits that, inasmuch as the possession 
of despotic power is ordinarily accompanied by some 
wrong-doing in the acquisition or in the use of it, it 
may be a reasonable rule of discipline to regard the 
mere possession of such a power as 'prima facie evi- 
dence of sin, and as constituting at least an occasion 
for investigation. The other proposal regards the 
power itself as sin, and excommunicates the master 
simply for standing in that relation. 

The first advantage of our proposal is, that all who 
love justice and mercy, and really desire the aboli- 
tion of slavery, can unite upon it. Men whose reve- 
rence for the Scriptures forbids them to adopt the 
anti-slavery formula, and who yet love righteousness 
and hate oppression, can act in this procedure. Nor 
do I see how any anti-slavery man can refuse to con- 
cur in it so far as it goes. He may find fault with it 
because it does not go far enough ; but how can he 
lift his voice or his hand to oppose it ? He may hold 
his own distinctive principle uncompromised, and yet 
vote to enforce the discipline of the church against all 
those definite specific sins which are none the less 
sinful if his principle is true. But on the other hand, 
there are multitudes of men in the churches and in 
the ministry, this side of Maryland, Avho do not 
adopt, and cannot be made to adopt, the mode of 
discipline recommended by the Anti-Slavery Society. 
It is easy to denounce these men as actuated by the 
most unchristian motives, and to imagine that they 
can be coerced into conformity, but after all they are 
neither fools nor rogues. It is easy to say of them, 
as an anonymous ^^fellow-sinner '^ of mine, who 



THE COLLISION. 2^ 

Avrites to me from New York, says, in the fervor of 
his spirit, " Hell never enacted upon our miserable 
earth a species of wickedness too base to find clerical 
defenders and apologists. War, murder, inquisi- 
tions, drunkenness, despotism, and lastly, that sum 
of all villanies, slavery, have never wanted advocates 
among the clergy." But after all, the men of whom 
I speak are conscientious in standing off from the 
Anti-Slavery Society, and the men of the Anti-Sla- 
very Society know it, even while denouncing them. 
Doubtless such men as Jeremiah Day, Noah Porter, 
Lyman Beecher, Leonard Woods and Moses Stuart, 
not to extend the catalogue, are as ''grasshoppers," 
in the eyes of the Anti-Slavery Society ; but after 
all, in any attempt to secure the application of church 
discipline to the masters of slaves, it is better to have 
even such men with you, if thereby you can do some- 
thing without compromising any principle, than it 
would be to insist upon a course in which they can- 
not follow you. 

Another advantage which our proposal has, is that 
it presents an issue upon which slaveholders cannot 
sophisticate their consciences as they do in their ar- 
gument with the Ami- Slavery Society. ' Slavery, or 
slaveholding,' says the Society, 'is necessarily, and 
in all circumstances, the sin of the slaveholder, and 
therefore the slaveholder, if after admonition he does 
not renounce his authority, at all hazards, is to be 
excommunicated as an incorrigible sinner.' 'No!' 
says the slaveholder, 'the Bible is not written on 
this principle ; in the Old Testament, and in the 
New, the Scriptures recognize servitude as an ac- 
tually existing relation; nor did Christ or his apes- 



228 T^E COLLISION. 

ties enjoin on masters any duty of immediate eman- 
pation, at all hazards, as a condition of salvation, 
or as a condition of membership in the church.' 
Having thus met the issue raised by the Anti- 
Slavery Society, and having answered their position, 
as it is easy for him to do to his own entire satisfac- 
tion, he feels that the Bible is on his side; if "the 
Abolitionists" are wrong, he, of course, is right; 
slavery is therefore all right, and he has nothing to 
do in the case but to support himself by the labor of 
his slaves if he can, or by selling them if their labor 
proves too unproductive. But our proposal presents 
another issue, and one which the slaveholder can- 
not get rid of so easily. It comes to him with the 
question, What are you doing for those poor neigh- 
bors of yours, over whose Avelfare for time and for 
eternity the providence of God has given you a 
power so full of awful responsibility 1 How are you 
treating them '? Do you pretend that God has given 
to you the dominion over them, as over the beasts of 
the field? Do you treat them as if they were your 
cattle ? Or do you treat them as your fellow-men, 
your equals before God, and according to the law, 
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself? Is their 
toil for you, uncompensated toil ? Or is the power 
which you have over them so administered by you, 
that the relation between you and them exists, in fact, 
for their benefit, rather than for yours ? If you rob 
those helpless beings of their human rights — if you 
do not render to them that which is just and equal — 
your pretence to be a Christian is a foul dishonor to 
the Christian name. 

It is another advantage of our proposal that it is 



THE COLLISION. 22^ 

the very thing which the Anti-Slavery Society pro- 
fesses to propose when it undertakes to define its 
own position. Since I began the publication of these 
articles, some one has sent me the Anti-Slavery Re- 
porter for July, 1845, containing the official account 
of the proceedings of the Society at its last annual 
meeting. Among the twenty-three resolutions adopt- 
ed on that occasion, to many of which I could most 
heartily subscribe, the following is marked with a 
pen for my special attention : 

*' 10. Resolved, that by slaveholding this Society understands 
the holding and treating of human beings as property ; and main- 
tains that to hold and treat a human being thus, is universally 
and always sinful, and ought to be everywhere immediately 
abandoned." 

Let us take this, then, as an authentic exposition 
of what the Anti-Slavery Society means when it 
demands that the churches shall, by the proper 
course of discipline, exclude all slaveholders from 
their fellowship. " This sin," as they say in the 
resolution immediately following — the sin thus de- 
fined — '^ the holding and treating of human beings 
as property"^^ — this, and not the sin of being a mas- 
ter of slaves, '^ is inconsistent with Christian char- 
acter and a regular standing in the church of Christ, 
and ought to be made the subject of remonstrance 
and discipline, according to each one's distinctive 
methods of procedure, in every branch of that 
church." Need I say that this is just what I am in- 
sisting upon? This identical sin of holding and 
treating men as property is one of those sins connect- 
ed with slavery, for which I would have discipline 
administered in all the churches. 



230 THE COLLISION. 

Where then do I differ from the Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety 1 Just on this point. I utterly repudiate their 
definition of slaveholding. I deny that they have 
any right to make such definition. Their attempt 
to do so is a fraud upon themselves and upon the 
public. Such a definition is an abuse of words fit 
only to juggle with. It is the fountain-head of a 
perpetual stream of sophistry. Words have a mean- 
ing of their own which cannot be set aside by an 
arbitrary definition. Words, and especially such 
words as we have to do with in political and moral 
inquiries, are not like the arbitrary symbols of al- 
gebra Avhich bear any meaning we choose to put 
upon them for the particular operation in which we 
are using them. I have no right to say that Trinity 
church spire is surmounted by a Turkish crescent, 
even though I explain myself by saying that cres- 
cent means cross. 

My objection to the resolution which I have 
quoted, is that it is not true. It is not true as a de- 
finition ; neither is it true as an averment of what 
'' the Society understands by slaveholding." No 
doubt the gentlemen of the Society think they mean 
by slaveholding what the resolution says they mean. 
No doubt they think that by slaveholding they mean 
not only the holding of slaves but the holding of 
them as property ^ and the treating of them as pro- 
perty. No doubt they are perfectly unconscious of 
the transparency w^ith which their cardinal sophism 
shines through the very language in which they 
wrap it up : ' Resolved, that by slaveholding we 
mean slaw eholdi7ig and a certain kind of treatment.' 
This very series of resolutions shows that in spite 



THE COLLISION. 231 

of their unanimous resolve, they do not mean what 
they intend to mean. In the eighteenth resohition 
they declare ^' that for missionary boards to appoint 
and support slaveholders as missionaries is a viola- 
tion of the spirit and teaching of Christ." What are 
they talking about in this eighteenth resolution ? 
The very thing that they have been talking about 
year after year in their continued assault upon the 
American Board of Missions respecting the case of 
the Rev. J. Leighton "Wilson, lately of Cape Palmas 
and now at the Gaboon. Mr. Wilson is or was the 
master, the owner of certain slaves in Georgia, and 
is therefore, or was, a slaveholder in the legitimate 
meaning of the word ; but to say of him that he 
holds and treats those men as property is a calumny 
for which I cannot believe that the authors of those 
resolutions intended to be responsible. The fact is, 
that by that word ^ slaveholder' they understand just 
what other people understand by it, ^ the master of 
a slave;' and then from their arbitrary definition of 
slaveholding they derive the irresistible corollary 
that every slaveholder holds his slaves as property 
and treats them accordingly. 

I have been for several years past not very familiar 
with the current anti-slavery publications ; but I 
rarely light upon a newspaper of that class which 
does not contain some specimen of this sophistry. 
Thus in a number of the ^'Liberty Press," published 
at Utica, (Jan. 18, 1846,) which has happened to 
fall in my way, I find a communication commenting 
on a paragraph from the ^' Dayspring," descriptive 
of slavery and the slavetrade in Abyssinia. '' The 
gospel," says the Dayspring in that paragraph, 



232 THE COLLISION. 

^' seems to be the only sure means to put an end to 
these horrid customs." This sentence the writer in 
the Liberty Press takes for his text, and after pre- 
mising that the Dayspring is published by the 
American Board of Foreign Missions, he gives out 
in an interrogative form the slander that this is "the 
same Board of Foreign Missions which, after solemn 
deliberation and discussion, resolved to employ 
slaveholders as their agents in foreign countries to 
propagate that gospel." I call this a slander, for it 
is not only not true in the false and forced sense 
which the Society in its definition tries to attach to 
the word ' slaveholding,' but it is not true in any 
sense. But let us go on with this writer. "It would 
be amusing," he says, "to hear one of these agents 
preaching, as Mr. Smith would say, gospel politics 
to the people of Abyssinia, whose overseer in Caro- 
lina was perhaps at that moment chaffering with a 
negro buyer about the price of a handsome female 
slave for the New Orleans market." See the 
sophism ! If Mr. Wilson is, or was, a slaveholder, 
then by the very definition of slavery, he holds and 
treats human beings as property ; and of course he 
sells the female slave, high-priced because of her 
beauty, for the New Orleans market. The writer 
adds, " There can be no doubt that a part of the 
funds of this Board of Foreign Missions consists of 
the avails of the sales of husbands, wives, parents 
and children, separately, to slaveholders in different 
and distinct parts of this extensive country." Of 
course there can be no doubt of it in the mind of a 
man who reasons in this way. Such calumnies 
thrown about " thick as leaves in Vallambrosa," are 



THE COLLISION. 233 

the natural product of the primal sophism, ^ slave- 
holding is slaveholding and something more.' Such 
a sophism assumed as a first principle, taken into 
the soul and kept there till it affects the entire system, 
becomes a disease of the intellect and of the moral 
faculties, which shows itself in the passionate belief 
and the reckless utterance of w4iat any sane man 
would know to be falsehood. When I see such 
things, I cannot but be reminded of the language in 
which the prophet sets forth the morbid effect of idol 
worship on the intellectual and moral nature : ^^ He 
feedeth on ashes ; a deceived heart hath turned him 
aside that he cannot deliver his soul nor say. Is there 
not a lie in my right hand 1" 

When I began this series of communications, I 
had no expectation whatever of taxing to so great an 
extent the patience of the editors and readers of this 
journal. But having begun, I found myself con- 
strained by a sense of duty to go on. Had I written 
for the sake of writing, I should have written on 
some other theme, on which I might write more 
easily and with less hazard to my own good name. 
My experience heretofore has shown me that when 
I write on this subject, I must make up my mind to 
encounter reproach from the most opposite quarters. 
But I have not suffered this, or any other considera- 
tion personal to myself, to restrtiin me from speaking 
what seems to me to be truth, important and timely. 
I have not written with a view of confirming what 
others have written whose views I presume to be 
generally coincident with my own; for though I am 
aware that Professor Pond has been writing in the 
New England Puritan, and Dr. Edward Beecher in 



234 THE COLLISION. 

the Boston Recorder, it has not been convenient for 
me to read either their articles or what Mr. Phelps 
has written in reply ; and as for Dr. Woods' two 
communications in the Puritan, which I have read 
with great pleasure, I knew nothing of them till 
most of my articles were written. At what seems 
to me a serious crisis in the history of our country 
and of Christianity, I have written to express my 
deep and long-matured convictions, and thus to dis- 
charge my own soul of the burthen which I felt that 
God had laid upon me. 

What I have to expect from the organs of the 
anti-slavery party, it is not difficult to conjecture. 
A question will be raised about my motives; or 
rather my motives will be represented as unques- 
tionably selfish and base. Last autumn I had occa- 
sion, in reply to an assault from the south, to publish 
a letter to the editor of the Pbiladelphia Observer, 
which the readers of the Evangelist may remember. 
That letter was copied into the Emancipator, with 
something like a column of commentary in this 
vein :* 

" Some are trying to see how far they can carry their conces- 
sions in favor of slavery, without absolutely awakening pubhc 
indignation against themselves at the north. Others are with 
equal assiduity trying to see how far they can carry their con- 
demnation of slavery, without actually cutting themselves off 
from religious association with the south. The former class are 
seeing how near they can come to the justification of slaveholding 
without being actually identified w'ith slaveholders : the latter, 
how near they can come to its condemnation without being actu- 
ally identified with abolitionists. 

* I find this not in the Emancipator itself, but in another paper which 
was put into my hands for another purpose. 



THE COLLISION. 



235 



"These latter gentlemen profess to hold the same views of 
slavery that they have always held. And perhaps, in many 
cases, they may he able to show where, ten or fifteen years ago, 
they expressed the same condemnation of slavery that they do 
now. The difference is, that formerly they came reluctantly to 
the expression of these views, lest they should be taken for abo- 
litionists—now they do it eagerly, lest they should be deemed 
apologists for slavery. Formerly, they put forth their anti- 
slavery sentiments as an apology for acting against abolition; now 
they put forth their excuses for slaveholding as an apology for 
speaking against slavery. 

" Of this class of theologians, no one has from the beginning 
come nearer to abolition without hitting it, than the Rev. Leonard 
Bacon, D. D., of New-Haven." 

To such libels scattered broadcast over all the 
north, and proceeding from men who know me well, 
and who are known to have been once my friends, 
I expose myself when I utter my convictions on this 
subject. It seems not to enter into the thoughts of 
those writers, that a man who differs from them on 
this most complicated theme, may possibly be honest. 
My answer to their imputations is, Perhaps my 
motives are important to the question of the sound- 
ness of my arguments ; perhaps you know my mo- 
tives better than I do; yet God knows them better 
than you do ; to my own master I stand or fall, and 
^' with me it is a very small matter that I should be 
judged of you, or of man's judgment." 



236 THE COLLISION. 



NO. VIII. 

EXPLANATIONS. 



I thought I had finished, when I appended to my 
last communication a postscript of condensed replies 
to those of my correspondents, known and unknown, 
whose inquiries or suggestions might seem to them 
not to have been sufficiently noticed heretofore. But 
as that postscript was not pubhshed in the last num- 
ber of the Evangelist, and as the editors have thus 
left me at liberty to continue the discussion for an- 
other week, it seems proper to draw out the postscript 
into a concluding chapter of explanations. And 
this is the more important as the publication of my 
last week's essay brought me an immediate return 
of questions, some of which seem to show that my 
views are not yet, in all quarters, perfectly under- 
stood. 

I. A correspondent in Ohio, who writes as a 
friend, though his name is to me that of a stranger, 
asks me to re-examine one position. The passage 
to which he refers is that in my second communi- 
cation, which represents the burthen of proof as de- 
volving upon those who shall hereafter bring certain 
accusations against our missionaries and churches 
among the Cherokees and Choctaws. This, he 
thinks, is a mistake. He says, '^ The .fact of a man 
holding his fellow-man as property, on the face of it 
appears wrong. Let the Board, by proper explana- 
tions, show that these are cases of a peculiar char- 
acter that exonerate those who do it from the charge 
of guilt. The missionaries are not a set of felons 



THE COLLISION. 23-7 

that we are trying to convict. They are honest men, 
and we will give entire credit to their statements. We 
only ask for facts, and will judge for ourselves. If 
we think they and the Board mistake in regard to 
their duty, we will say it in all kindness as friends. 
We shall not abandon the Board or the missionaries 
till we find they adopt as a settled policy the practice 
of admitting slaveholders to communion and church 
fellowship." 

I have accordingly ^' re-examined" my position, 
and I find that my correspondent has quite mistaken 
my meaning. If he in his turn will ^^ re-examine," 
he will see that what I say in that place is founded 
entirely on the explanations which the missionaries, 
and the Board as speaking in their behalf, have 
given. My position is this : Either the report made 
at Brooklyn, and since published, is entirely unwor- 
thy of credit as a representation of facts, or if there 
is in any church under the care of our missionaries 
a master who buys or sells human beings as merchan- 
dise — who does not recognize, in respect to his ser- 
vants, the divine sanctity of their relations as hus- 
bands and wives, and as parents and children — who 
permits his servants to live and die in ignorance of 
God and of God's Word — who does not render to his 
servants that which is just and equal — or who re- 
fuses to acknowledge their dignity and worth as 
reasonable and immortal beings for whom Christ 
died — that master, upon being convicted of any such 
specification, '' would be admonished by the church, 
and unless he should repent would be excommuni- 
cated." We have the dcjclaration of the Board to 
this effect, founded upon the information received 
11* 



238 THE COLLISION. 

from their missionaries, and using to a considerable 
extent the very language of the missionaries them- 
selves. From this time forward those who shall as- 
sume the responsibility of affirming the contrary, are 
bound to prove what they affirm. 

But my friend says, ^' Give us the facts, in each 
case of slaveholding, and we will judge for ourselves." 
To me it seems that if we know the principles on 
which those missionaries and churches administer 
discipline, and if we have their comprehensive de- 
nial of all facts inconsistent with those principles, 
tbat is enough. Whether the facts in a particular 
case are such as show that a man is, in the judgment 
of charity, a Christian, acting in a Christian spirit, 
is a question upon which none are so well qualified 
to judge as that man's Christian neighbors, the very 
church with which he is in covenant. If my corres- 
pondent is charged with being a forger, on the ground 
that inasmuch as he is a skillful penman he has it 
in his power to commit forgery upon a sufficient 
temptation, and if I am therefore required to deny 
him fellowship, his denial of the charge is enough 
to put all who repeat it upon the duty of proving it. 
If the church to which he belongs is charged with 
admitting forgers to communion because it admits a 
man who can forge if he chooses, it is enough for 
that church to deny the charge and to demand the 
proof. Just so if a church is charged with admitting 
oppressors to communion because it admits '' believ- 
ing masters," who could oppress if they would, and 
who would be oppressors if they were not believers, 
it is enough for that church to meet the charge with 
a denial. Such is the position of the Cherokee and 



THE COLLISION. ^39 

Choctaw churches and of the missionaries there ; 
and such is the position of the Board. 

It is to be observed here that the charge of admit- 
ting slaveholders to communion is not denied ; but 
the charge of admitting o^pre^^or^ to communion is 
denied comprehensively and in various specifica- 
tions. So, in the case supposed, the church to which 
my correspondent belongs does not deny the charge 
of admitting to communion a man who can commit 
forgery if he will ; it only denies the charge of ad- 
mitting one wdio does comn)it forgery. If I can find 
reason to believe that a church in a slaveholding 
country will rigidly administer discipline against all 
specifications of oppression, I shall not doubt that 
the influence of that church will be as efficient for 
the promotion of freedom and of righteousness as if 
it were to excommunicate men simply for being 
slaveholders. As for the '' settled policy" of the 
Board, I can only speak from my knowledge of the 
men and of the churches ; but I think I may say 
that two points are immovably settled ; — first, that 
the missionaries are never to permit any sort of op- 
pression, on the part of those under their care as 
converts, to pass uncensured ; and secondly, that no 
considerations of expediency, either political or ec- 
clesiastical, will be deemed a sufficient reason for 
adopting a formula w^hich would exclude from the 
missionary work the author of the first epistle to 
Timothy, and of the epistles to the Ephesians and 
Colossians. 

II. The friend who writes to me from Maine, and 
whose ingenuousness I cannot question, has miscon- 
ceived (and therefore I presume that others equally 



240 '-i'i^^ COLLISION. 

candid have also misconceived) the meaning of the 
note in which I answered a case of conscience about 
a slave who runs away from the mere relation of 
subjection to a master's confessedly beneficent au- 
thority. In my understanding- of the case, the mas- 
ter who conducts himself in that relation according 
to the impulses of a Christian spirit, would readily 
permit his slave to emigrate, if so disposed, and 
would put him in the way of helping himself, so 
that the necessity of the slave's running away to 
avoid what might happen in case of his master's 
death, and the consequent necessity of his throwing 
himself on the sympathies of abolitionists as a men- 
dicant, would not exist. 

III. Another, writing from a village in Central 
New York, wishes me to '^ discuss two questions." 
^' Does the law of love plainly require any master to 
control the services of his servant, against liis will, 
without reward, during his (the servant's) lifel If 
not, does the law of love plainly ijermit the master 
to control the services of his servant, against his 
will, without reward, during his life 1" 

To discuss these questions in detail might exhaust 
the patience of those who are waiting to reply to 
me. I can only give my opinion. (1.) The law of 
love requires every master to render to his slaves, 
in the best practicable form, a just equivalent for all 
their service. He may not be able to render that 
equivalent in the form of wages, and he may err in 
judging what wages he would have to pay them in 
a state of freedom ; for the theory of fair wages sup- 
poses that the laborer and employer are at once 
mutually dependent and mutually independent ; 



THE COLLISION. 241 

and the rate of wages, i. e., the price of labor, i. e., 
the share which labor is to have in the division of 
what is the joint product of labor, skill and capital, 
is determined, just as the price of any other com- 
modity is determined, by the state of the market. 
But no conscientious man will consider himself enti- 
tled to use the services of his fellow-men, simply 
because he has power over them, without rendering- 
to them what he in his conscience regards as a just 
equivalent. Such equivalent may be rendered in 
the form of food, clothing, house-rent, protection, 
and an accumulating fund as in a savings bank, 
which is ultimately to establish the slaves as free in 
some free country. Or it 7rMy be rendered in some 
other^way. (2.) I hold that the law of love requires 
the master to regard the relation between himself and 
his slaves as a relation to be dissolved as soon as it 
can be done consistently with the welfare of the 
slaves. If one slave and another dies before that time 
arrives, it is analogous to the case of an apprentice 
dying in his minority. The master's right to main- 
tain the relation, for the protection and government 
of the slave, as long as the slave lives, unless the 
slave chooses to become free by emigration, is far 
less doubtful than his right to maintain it till his own 
death shall throw them into the hands of his heirs 
or of his creditors. 

IV. In my description of a case of actual slave- 
holding, there was a sentence which has excited a 
violent curiosity in the mind of the "fellow sinner," 
who, under various signatures, has favored me with 
several communications, the first of which was the 



242 THE COLLISION. 

case of conscience. Of the master whom I described, 
I said, '' The discipline on his plantation is not 
lax, but strict ; his people are in every respect order- 
ly, and are obliged to be so." These few words 
raise in my correspondent's mind *^ visions of over- 
seers and cowskins ;" and he desires me to tell him 
whether I ''witnessed a Christian flagellation laid 
on according to apostolical sanction." Frankly, then, 
I witnessed no such thing. And furthermore, in all 
that I have said about applying '' discipline," "strict 
discipline," in the church, to those who are guilty of 
certain offences, I do not mean such discipline as 
has been used against heretics in Spain, nor do I de- 
mand that the offenders shall be flogged with '' cow- 
skins." And if, in describing the management of a 
Christian shipmaster, setting it in contrast with that 
of many a rough and brutal captain, I should say, 
"The discipline on board his vessel is not lax, but 
strict ; his men are in every respect orderly, and are 
obliged to be so," I should not mean that he has no 
method of maintaining order and discipline, but by 
the rope's end. Or if, in describing a schoolmaster 
as very unlike those of the tribe of Mr. Squeers, I 
should say, " The discipline in his school is not lax, 
but strict ; the boys arc in every respect orderly, and 
are obliged to be so," I should not mean that he is 
in tlic habit of whipping and kicking his pupils. 
Discipline is not of course cruelty. 

V. From another correspondent I have received 
several inquiries — of which he says, " These are 
practical questions, and I presume there are many 
who would like to know how you would answer 



THE COLLISION. 243 

tliem." I will, therefore, answer his questions as 
briefly as I can, in the order in which he proposes 
them. 

1. He asks whether, if a clergyman from the 
south should come to New Haven, and should be 
commonly reported to be a slaveholder, I would re- 
gard that reputation as prima facie evidence against 
him, and would, on that account, refuse to invite 
him to my pulpit. To this I answer, that as mat- 
ters now stand, in respect to discipline in the south- 
ern^churches, I should delay asking a slaveholder, or 
one commonly reputed to be such, to preach for me, 
till, either by friendly conference, or in some other 
way, I had obtained such knowledge of him as would 
enable me to believe that he is endeavoring honestly, 
and in the fear of God, to render to his servants that 
which is just and equal. But after obtaining satis- 
faction on this point, I should have no scruple what- 
ever. The difficulty is, that as matters now are, the 
fact of a man's being a Presbyterian minister at the 
south in ever so high standing, is not of itself suffi- 
cient evidence, nor is it even prima facie evidence, 
of his being free from very gross sins ; such as mak- 
ing merchandise of men, women and cliildren, who 
happen to be placed helpless in his power ; or sun- 
dering the husl^and and wife, the parents and their 
child ; or compelling them to toil for him all their 
lives long, without once asking himself conscien- 
tiously what he owes them for their toil ; or leaving 
them to the tender mercies of a wicked overseer, who 
cares not for their welfare or their rights. There- 
fore, as in the case of a minister from Germany, the 
official certificates of his ordination and of his unim- 



244 THE COLLISION. 

peached standing would be no evidence of his not 
being a rationalist ; and as in the case of a minister 
from the Church of England, the official certificates 
of his ordination and of his unimpeached standing 
would be no proof of his making any profession of 
what we call evangelical piety ; so in the case of a 
minister from certain regions of the south, the like 
certificates would be no conclusive evidence of his 
not being an oppressor of his fellow-men. I do, in- 
deed, know a slaveholder who often preaches for me, 
and whose slaveholding is not the least scandal in 
my eyes. If the south were well supplied with just 
such ministers as he is, we might hope to see great 
changes there. 

2. My friend also inquires whether, if a layman, 
reputed to be a slaveholder, should offer himself for 
admission to my church, I would admit him without 
an examination on the point of his slaveholding. I 
answer, that in respect to occasional communion, we 
are not accustomed to make any examination of 
strangers professing to be Christians, who happen to 
be present in our assemblies. But admission to 
membership is another affair ; and if one reputed to 
be a master of slaves should offer himself, we should 
desire to know how he performs his duties toward 
those ignorant, unprotected, helpless men, so abso- 
lutely committed to his power. We should certainly 
desire to know whether he is treating them accord- 
ing to the law of love, or whether he is treating 
them as property. 

3. Another question is, whether I would employ 
slaveholders as missionaries, either at home or in 
foreign countries. I think that when God qualifies 



THE COLLISION. 245 

and calls a southern slaveholder to preach the 
gospel, he does not often call such a man to Africa 
or China. Let him preach at home, and if he will 
preach faithfully, and administer discipline faith- 
fully, so far as the administration of discipline is in 
his hands, I see no reason why we should not help 
him if he needs assistance. It is by the labor of 
just such men on their native southern soil that 
slavery is to be abolished. 

There is one more point of explanation to which, 
in conclusion, I would ask the attention of the 
reader. Some may think that in my theory of how 
Christianity may and will operate for the extinction 
of slaver}^, a great amount of time is required, 
whereas we want, and ought to have, some quicker 
process. Undoubtedly slavery ought to be abolished 
much sooner than it is likely to be ; but how can we 
abolish it? The problem of the abolition of slavery 
in this country is altogether unlike the now accom- 
plished problem of the abolition of slavery in the 
British colonies. The abolition of slavery was 
imposed upon Jamaica and Demarara, and the other 
British countries at this side of the Atlantic, by an 
extrinsic physical force which could not be resisted. 
How long Avould the abolition of slavery in those 
countries have been deferred if it had waited for the 
spontaneous action of the colonial legislative assem- 
blies ? Had Jamaica been an independent state 
— had its laws been simply the expression of the 
judgments and sentiments entertained by its white 
population, what could have been effected there by 
political and religious agitation in Great Britain 
— liberty tickets — Exeter Hall speeches — votes of 



246 THE COLLISION. 

the Congregational Union or of the London Mis- 
sionary Society? The slaveholding States in the 
American confederation, considered as States, are 
free ; no Imperial Parliament can dictate laws to 
them. The abolition of slavery can be imposed 
upon them from without by no other agency than 
war — an agency which I do not believe the anti- 
slavery societies or their members expect to employ. 
In those States, then, the abolition of slavery, if 
effected by any peaceful process, Avill take place 
only as the result of a change in the people there 
— a change which shall make them recognize the 
slave as a man — a change Avhich shall make them 
understand and feel that a free black peasant, 
laboring for wages and taking care of himself, is a 
practicable thing, and is every w^ay a better thing, 
more sightly to the eye, more agreeable to the moral 
sense, more safe and profitable to the landholder 
and to the State, than a slave laboring under the 
lash of a driver, and taken care of as a horse is b}^ 
his owner. The true problem for anti-slavery phi- 
lanthrophy is, how to effect that change in the 
minds and hearts of the southern people — that 
change in their judgments and affections — out of 
which the legislative abolition must proceed. And 
to me it seems that either that moral and intel- 
lectual change must be despaired of entirely, or the 
chief agent in effecting it must be Christianity, 
under such an administration of it as, in these com- 
munications, I have attempted to describe ; — not 
Christianity in the form of law concerning itself 
with outward civil relations, but the Christianity of 
light and love — the Christianity of spiritual indi- 



THE COLLISION. 247 

vidual regeneration, recognizing as Christians all 
those^ and only those, who give evidence of loving 
Godj and of loving their neighbors as themselves. 






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